DIGITAL DETOX

People spend endless hours staring at screens, tiring their eyes to such a great extent and not realizing it. Some of them don’t really have a choice as their occupation demands it and then there are others like me who are just binge-watching crap day in and day out or wasting away their time on social media ranting about some random issue, half the world don’t care about.

I found myself entangled in a similar situation where all I did except for sleeping was looking at my phone, then laptop, then playing on PS4 and then finally wrapping my day with 4 hours of television. It seems a bit exaggerated even to me but believe me its not. This was during lockdown and things were getting way out of hands. I realized this as I was tired and unhappy, kinda gloomy at the end of the day. This went on for many days. Sleeping in late, waking up late, being tired and feeling shitty and unproductive. So I decided something had to be done and I thought about detox and it happened immediately after I had finished watching BREAKING BAD(The best series of all time).

I switched off my phone and that was it. Oh wait that’s not it, I also didn’t use any other gadgets for 24 hours that day. I noticed that I had plenty of time on my hands and I was already feeling bored. I was sitting on the sofa ruminating about my present and future when I realized that I should be studying. Still an impossible, mind numbing task but I did it, not because I didn’t have anything better to do but because I felt like it needed to be done. Then my mom called me for lunch but I didn’t have lunch sitting in front on the T.V. instead I sat alone in my room and ate in silence. It was an interesting experience, usually only happens when I’m mad at my parents or vice versa. After the lunch I decided to read a novel. The truth is I absolutely love reading novels since I was 10 but the reading had stopped drastically once I got my phone. Yes its sad, but I am slowly turning back to novels now. Currently I’m reading Dan Brown’s Inferno and I’ve to admit its one of the best, most informative and engaging piece of fiction I’ve ever read. Well Dan Brown is one of my favorite authors. Anyways that day I picked up a collection of short stories from the romance genre and finished reading two stories of 100 and 50 pages long each in an hour. Then I turned to my second favorite hobby that is painting. I’ve always liked to draw, paint and sketch since I was little but I’m not very good at it, just an amateur who gets frustrated with everything they make because they can’t get all the details right. This is one of the reasons why I had totally given up but I do draw sometimes when I feel like it, more like when I get a burst of inspiration from Pinterest. Many people have told me to never give up and keeping working on my skills be it the art stuff or the writing stuff but the truth is I only do what I feel like doing and sometimes it turns out great and those same people mistake it for a passion. They believe I have a knack for these things and passionate about stuff but the only thing I’m passionate about is quitting. I almost quit everything I do but something I didn’t quit that day was the detox. I felt the temptation to look at my phone, to end the stupid detox and watch T.V. but I didn’t. I didn’t because I had promised myself that I wouldn’t and also because so far the day had been a great one and I was only a few hours away from slumber time. I didn’t feel tired from watching blue light screen and sitting at one place all day. Instead I felt anew found energy from all the squats and pushups I did because I was bored and feeling fat. It had been a productive day and I had lots of time for myself and to ponder about stuff. The satisfaction I felt made it worth not using my phone.

At the end of the day if we are able to get that feeling of satisfaction from whatever we do then it means that we are on the right path, doing the right thing.