PINK MAN ONLINE

9 whole days, instantly

"Time Walk: 1 Mana, 1 Blue

Sorcery – Take an extra turn after this one"

I installed a neat little app called ScreenZen nine days ago, one of those ones that you can use to block apps, websites and even certain features within apps (mostly short form content).

I've considered these apps before, but never installed them myself because I don't exactly struggle with an addiction to social media. Long made short, the apps themselves weren't things I used frequently, but when I did, infinite scroll and fairly precise recommendations make it easy to end up spending more time than I originally intended on it. It's more of a petty grievance, really, since I'm fairly easily distracted; these apps are good at showing me what I want to see, and that can be fun, but when I opened these apps, it wasn't really opening them with any purpose in mind.

Really, it's more about intentionality than addiction, and that's what I found I've been liking about this newfangled app I've discovered. The granular ability to filter down to websites is uncommon as far as I've seen, and certainly welcome, but even better is the way it handles blocking: I can set a timer before I'm allowed to use it, have it redirect me to a different app, or even display messages to remind myself of why the block is there to begin with. Most importantly, I can write my own message that appears with my timer, which is set to 5 minutes of being focused on the timer, message on full display. Of course, it would be kinda silly to praise the custom message function without divulging my own written note:

"DO YOU ACTUALLY WANT TO OPEN THIS?
DO YOU NEED TO?
WILL IT CHANGE YOUR LIFE?"

Maybe a bit extreme, but I thought it was a fun way to ask myself if I'm really opening the app in question because I have something I want to do on it, or if I'm just being lazy about a bit of boredom.

Surprise surprise, 9 days later (today, May 4th) and I haven't opened anything I've affixed my totally moderate warning label to, not even once. It's some nice peace and quiet for the low cost of zero attention-span-dollars. That's good investing if I've ever heard of it.

Now, it's not all peaches and cream up in Pink World: I haven't been filling that time with as much as I'd like to be filling it with. It's annoying to be in a mental funk that makes doing anything (even fun things) an uphill battle, but I'll take that over not spending any time on those things at all by way of lack of time or energy. More positively, however, I still have been doing things, I'm just picky. A non-exhaustive list would be:

Putting it into a list makes it feel like more than it does when you're actually doing it. Where it concerns doing more, I'm fairly confident I could reasonably fit more in, especially with my rather haphazard way of doing things; a bit of planning goes a long way. My problem boils down to that difficulty in doing things: I know I'll do a number of then, if not all, but it's hard to predict, much less control, when I have it in me to do those things.

Sometimes I wonder if I need a break from all of my current hobbies, but then I'm left wondering what else I'd do, as the lack of activities is kind of the infamous, eternal message of the day at Pink World: GOOD LUCK FINDING SOMETHING TO DO :^)

Really, all I wish to do is treat the underlying cause of all this difficulty in doing things. That would be awesome, but how do you even begin to fix a problem you can barely identify? It's a tough question, though I've no intention on giving up yet, not for a long while at the minimum.

I know I'm not the only person who struggles with this, as I've spoken with others who have the same problem, but I'm not feeling particularly inclined to keep bemoaning the same knots in my life in curricular fashion.

I know I wanted to write reviews of things I like (not the scored kind though, those aren't very fun to write at all), so I'd like to work on that. I'll try to make that my goal today, then. Start something.

I've only been trying to do it for weeks lol

I'll try and get back to this blog if I do end up getting any writing done; I'd likely format it for YouTube, though consider it early access I suppose, that's a good way to put it.

Good luck to me, and I'll see you on the other side, netizens.
-- Pink