.3 - Un-distractible but anxious

2025-02-09

Fist post of the year, and one week late, not the strongest of starts to this year but it is completely offset by the great success that was the challenge that I set for myself last month. If you have not read my previous post (you should, it's right there) I set a challenge for myself, to avoid all social media (mainly YouTube) for the entirety of the month of January. And this blog post is going over how it went, and what comes next.

Starting at the beginning

As I woke up on January first I already knew that this was going to be hard, that is why I had already uninstalled all of the YouTube apps and blocked all the content suggestions from YouTube on all of my devices on the previous day. And that day felt like the longest day of my life, in fact, going up until January fifth it was a struggle, because on an average day I would spend about six hours mindlessly watching content on YouTube, those were no ordinary days, I was on vacation, so I could have spent over double that time on YouTube.

Looking back I should have kept tally of how many times I felt the urge to open up YouTube, but ultimately I managed to fight against those urges and stay on track, and even though I prepared some things to do the reality of just how much time I wasted away hit me like a truck, "what the hell am I supposed to do with all this free time, I can only clean my room so many times!".

Well playing games was the immediate thing that came to mind, and almost immediately I noticed one thing, I was able to play games that I used to love for longer periods of time than the previous month, for example Factorio is a great game, a game that I used to play for entire days, but just the week before I tried to play it again and only played for about 15 minutes before my monkey brain said "well this is boring, I wonder if there is anything good to watch" and promptly closed the game, but during this first week I found myself opening it a couple of times and playing for multiple hours at a time, sure I still got those thoughts in the back of my mind like "this is a bit boring", or "I could be doing something more entertaining" but those thoughts quickly vanished as I realized "what would be better than playing a game that I love?". The same thing happened with other games.

But the one thing that kept me sane were the couple of friends that I usually play with, even though they don't know it they were a huge help especially at the start of the challenge because when I'm playing with them I don't think of opening a video in the background or closing the game I'm playing to watch something.

The following week

I had also planned some things to do every day, but those plans only really took into account weekdays when I spend most of the day at work, like watching through my backlog of shows during lunch break at work, practicing playing the drums and drawing everyday when I get home, reading at least a chapter of a physical book and meditating a couple of minutes everyday just before going to bed

And unknowingly I might have picked up the best combination I could have picked of book and meditation style (mind you I don't know much about either of those areas), just before starting the challenge I picked up a copy of "Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones" by James Clear at a local book store and started to practice mindfulness meditation with the help of an app called Medito.

Here is why I think that that combination was so important, I, like many others, believed that the outcomes of what I wanted to do and habits that I wanted to create/break depended mostly on motivation, and I also believed that my lack of motivation towards improvement stemmed from always being distracted with something, hence this entire challenge's existence. Atomic Habits shattered those beliefs into a thousand of tiny pieces with clear logic and real examples, the biggest for me was the fact that one cannot change an habit with motivation alone, because motivation comes and goes at seemingly random times, and that made more sense that what I previously believed, for the longest time I had bursts of motivation that lead me to do lots of work and change on short amounts of time, like making this blog or this very challenge, but they tend to fall flat as soon as the motivation dries up so I though that if I could control that motivation that I could do anything, turns out that that usually leads to a crash and burnout. As it turns out the real secret to forming good habits is systems, instead of focusing on the goal of watching less YouTube I needed to focus on being a person that doesn't watch YouTube, I really recommend reading that book as it shows you a new perspective of how to look at, build and break habits with great real examples and suggestions of how to apply them to your life. And as I started to apply the principles and ideas in that book is where mindfulness really came in, as I got more aware of my thoughts I also got aware of how they were changing as I applied the things I learned trough reading.

The remaining weeks

My loosely defined goals became routines of small habits, "playing the drums" became "after getting home, take a shower then play the drums for at least 30 minutes", "reading and meditating" became "30 minutes before bed read at least one chapter and meditate for at least 5 minutes", "watching through my backlog of shows during lunch break" evolved to "watch one episode of the show I'm currently going through and then read manga until it's time to get back to work".

Also some new habits started emerging to fill in more time, like "on saturdays after waking up shave my beard and then shower", and "practicing speaking in the multiple languages that I know on downtime like showering or work commute", and towards the end of the month "study Japanese for at least one hour after diner"

After all of that the goal of "watching less YouTube" kind of vanished from my mind, and so did the urge to open YouTube when I was bored, instead I started to think about the projects and ideas that I have for things to do (that I haven't really started for reasons that I will discuss in a minute),I had changed into a persons that doesn't waste time watching YouTube, and to prove that on the last couple of days i started a simple thought experiment, I am subscribed to over 800 channels on YouTube, how many of them can I remember right now and how many of those do I miss watching, the answers were about 15 and 6 respectively (with the 6 being: SmarterEveryday, exurb1a, Grian, MumboJumbo, Smii7y, Markiplier), I know that I'm subscribed to a lot of channels that make great, funny and educational content but the truth of the matter is that I've been mostly using all of that as background noise, as I was writhing this very sentence I decided to "un-block" the notifications from YouTube and check out what I was missing, there were over 400 notifications for uploads during this month, and that's supposed to be a curated list of content creators that I think are a better use of my time than the others, I am not sure how I'm going to do it yet, but I certainly need to do a mass purge of my subscriptions and possibly re-introduce some of them, like the ones I mentioned before, into my "show watching schedule".

✦Anxiety✦

Ha ha.... I tried to ignore this for most of my life but it has been preventing me from taking on soooo many opportunities and following through with my ideas that I just can't run from it anymore. The truth is that I am extremely anxious, and ever since I remember I've let my anxious thoughts control me, "what if I fail", "I'm not good enough", "they don't like me anyway", "what if she says no", and thanks to those thoughts on repeat on the back of my head I've never really started to do much of anything and my social skills are pretty much non existent. And the worst part is I KNOW that I'm capable of so much more, I started learning English (my second language) before even knowing how to write in my native language (Portuguese), I learnt to speak enough French to be confused for a native in just 3 months for god sakes, and right after that I learnt Spanish, then in an afternoon I learnt enough programming to carry me trough 3 years of programming courses. I learnt CAD and CAM on my own, I've designed entire structures on my own like my home office were I sit at this very moment and was involved on building them. I learnt how to read, design and create electronic and electric circuits on my own, I've repaired countless devices and made most the electrical system of my house.

I KNOW I'm capable, so why am I still afraid? I know that ultimately what other people think doesn't matter so why am I still afraid? I know that I can't get better at talking to people if I don't talk to people, so why am I still afraid?

And it isn't even just a mental thing like "oh I'm afraid but I think I can do it", no, it's an actual physical aversion to starting, I don't need to feel afraid of people if I don't interact with them so I don't leave the house, I fear that my projects might fall short of my ideas so I don't start them, I fear disappointing my friends and family so I don't show them the little that I work on. I feared rejection so I avoided talking to the one girl I had a crush on. In the end I fell like all of these times that I avoided something hurt more than the possible "bad" outcome would have, and now a lot of those opportunities have passed, a whopping 23 years of missed shots that I never even tried to take.

I wish this had a simple answer, but as with every other thing related to the human mind it is extremely complicated.

From what I've gathered these last couple of years researching this very issue it seems that the most effective ways to lower anxiety is mindfulness and gradual exposure, both things that I have already started, as you read before I've been meditating which has helped me recognize these negative thoughts and let go of them, not always but it has been improving my mental state, and gradual exposure, I've been gradually trying to buy more things at brick and mortar stores than online to be around more people and get more used to talk with strangers, I've also been trying to talk more with my co-workers, and most importantly I started this blog to share my thoughts and goals. Never in my life I shared this much about what goes on inside my head, not even my closest friends and family know this side of me, everyone always saw me as the quiet smart kid, and I always managed to keep that facade up. I realize what I've been missing out on and I think it's about time to start taking down these mental walls.

I'm not quite sure how, but I want to, no... I WILL be a more open person, using what I've learnt this past month I WILL become the better version of myself, I will talk to people, I will start working on my projects and I WILL beat anxiety.

As I was starting on working on this blog post I receive an e-mail from a reader, so I know that at least one person is somewhat interested in what I have to say. So I will bring you, the reader, along in this quest of mine, during this next week I will write down a list of the projects and things that I want to work on and share it here, I will then also more regularly share progress on those projects as well as my social adventures (like going shopping to an unfamiliar place, weeeeee) on a hopefully weekly-ish basis

This blog post took me nearly 4 hours to write, that's how bad I am at sharing my thoughts and why I haven't really done it before, but that will improve. I hope to have you around next week!

As per usual, my contacts are on the about page, you can send any thoughts and suggestions my way if you feel like it.