Not sure if anyone’s gonna see this, but I’d be curious to hear quick check-ins: how’s everyone doing ~1 month in, with ~2 weeks to go?
I’ve stuck to no porn and basically felt no desire to go back, which is nice. In general I’ve felt incredibly free from all of my non-social addictions since the beginning of February; watching TV or playing video games by myself holds almost no appeal either. I still find myself drawn to social addictions like Facebook but I mostly endorse this for the time being.
I’ve stuck to no fiction. (I unthinkingly read a few paragraphs of a short story that came across my Twitter, but otherwise have been consistent.)
It’s mostly been fairly easy. It’s really obvious now that it’s a social pica. I think some of the time I would have spent on it has been going to increased use of LessWrong and Facebook, which are also social picas, but those are both more genuinely social, and harder to lose 8 hours at a time to.
There was at least one night where I was pretty unhappy, and didn’t have access to any actual friends to spend time with, and really wanted to lose myself in a book. I probably think that ordinarily it would have been an ok thing to do as a coping mechanism, but it was useful to observe how badly I needed the coping mechanism. That makes it obvious how much I need the real thing.
There are also a couple things I’m genuinely looking forward to reading when Lent is over. (Murphy’s Quest, for one.) But I’d say those things are probably ~1/4 or less the amount of fiction I would have read this month without Lent.
This has been an especially exciting/productive/momentum-filled month for me. This probably makes it easier than normal to not read fiction. Though maybe there’s some causality the other direction as well?
I’ve stuck to not using Youtube for three weeks (I only committed to not do it for a week), and found it a very enlightening experience. I now use it much more sporadically, and was quite surprised how much I really wanted to go to Youtube during the first week.
Basically stuck to my commitment—early on I bent it a bit by taking ‘notes’ in the form of drawing abstract scribbles, but I now mostly don’t do that. I have also once or twice looked up info relevant to the meeting, but both times felt pretty in the spirit. This has partially been achieved by attending fewer lectures and meetings, which is something I explicitly permitted myself to do.
I did in fact meditate 10 minutes a day for a week, then promptly stopped.
Not sure if anyone’s gonna see this, but I’d be curious to hear quick check-ins: how’s everyone doing ~1 month in, with ~2 weeks to go?
I’ve stuck to no porn and basically felt no desire to go back, which is nice. In general I’ve felt incredibly free from all of my non-social addictions since the beginning of February; watching TV or playing video games by myself holds almost no appeal either. I still find myself drawn to social addictions like Facebook but I mostly endorse this for the time being.
I’ve stuck to no fiction. (I unthinkingly read a few paragraphs of a short story that came across my Twitter, but otherwise have been consistent.)
It’s mostly been fairly easy. It’s really obvious now that it’s a social pica. I think some of the time I would have spent on it has been going to increased use of LessWrong and Facebook, which are also social picas, but those are both more genuinely social, and harder to lose 8 hours at a time to.
There was at least one night where I was pretty unhappy, and didn’t have access to any actual friends to spend time with, and really wanted to lose myself in a book. I probably think that ordinarily it would have been an ok thing to do as a coping mechanism, but it was useful to observe how badly I needed the coping mechanism. That makes it obvious how much I need the real thing.
There are also a couple things I’m genuinely looking forward to reading when Lent is over. (Murphy’s Quest, for one.) But I’d say those things are probably ~1/4 or less the amount of fiction I would have read this month without Lent.
This has been an especially exciting/productive/momentum-filled month for me. This probably makes it easier than normal to not read fiction. Though maybe there’s some causality the other direction as well?
I’ve stuck to not using Youtube for three weeks (I only committed to not do it for a week), and found it a very enlightening experience. I now use it much more sporadically, and was quite surprised how much I really wanted to go to Youtube during the first week.
Not having Facebook or YouTube on my laptop has been net positive I think. Not having Netflix has been weakly negative, I’ll not keep that up.
Basically stuck to my commitment—early on I bent it a bit by taking ‘notes’ in the form of drawing abstract scribbles, but I now mostly don’t do that. I have also once or twice looked up info relevant to the meeting, but both times felt pretty in the spirit. This has partially been achieved by attending fewer lectures and meetings, which is something I explicitly permitted myself to do.
I did in fact meditate 10 minutes a day for a week, then promptly stopped.