Salon post : March 16

[jenett]

Welcome to this week's salon post!

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Topic of the week
I took Monday and Tuesday off this week, to play catchup on life. It got me thinking about how I use vacation time, and what makes my life easier.

What do you do that improves your life? (Especially if it's a somewhat new thing.)

What I've been up to:
I am now cheerfully into the Martha seasons of New Who. But today, I'd love to rec a podcast, This Is Love (from the same people who do Criminal, which I also like a lot).

I listened to episode 5, "A Private Life" on the way into work this morning, and it is both adorable and a fascinating view of legal history around same-sex marriage and changing attitudes.


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Comments

[theora]

Two things I have been attempting (with variable success):

1) Decluttering/neatening/generally trying to make parts of my house nice to be in. I never learned how to clean up as a kid (borderline hoarder dad), but I realize that I'm much happier when I walk into a room that's uncluttered and inviting. With two kids in the house, not every room can be that way, but my bedroom can be. But it's hard, especially when I've gotten rid of loads of stuff yet don't seem to have made a dent *grumble*.

2) Spending less time on the internet (she says, from the internet). I feel better with less screen time, but it's pretty much addictive by design. Also I'm on Facebook trying to get rid of my excess stuff *rolleyes*. I use my laptop for everything: to do lists, recipes, music and podcasts, and "while I'm there" "just for a minute" I take a peek at Facebook, find some stupid argument, and 20 minutes pass without me realizing. But there have been days when I've deliberately shut down and picked up a book. Small progress is some progress.

[alexseanchai]

I hear you so hard on both points (they say from their laptop in a seriously untidy bedroom)

[brithistorian]

Yay for shutting down and picking up a book. I've been trying to do that as well. I've been making a conscious effort to spend less time on Facebook, and generally find that the less time I spend there, there happier I am. Now I pretty much go in once a day, check my notifications, check to see if my wife posted anything, and then I'm out of there.

I've also been working on decluttering. One of my goals for the new year (I made quantifiable goals rather than resolutions, and it's helped me stick with them) has been to spend 15 minutes decluttering on at least 50% of days. Yesterday I got rid of a stack of old papers and magazine about a foot and a half high! ^_^

[alexseanchai]

(I made quantifiable goals rather than resolutions, and it's helped me stick with them)

awesome!

[jenett]

One of the things I've done is realise that it's not the screentime, per se for me, it's what I'm doing with it. (For a variety of reasons, I don't get out much other than work, so if I didn't talk to people online, I would have insufficient social time, even for an introvert.)

The thing that helped me is making it harder to go do the things where I'll get sucked down a hole, and easier to do the things that produce high quality conversation that matters to me.

So, I do tracking on DW discussions of interest (I may or may not comment, but at least I'm seeing great stuff!) I have an ongoing rambling email conversation with one particular friend. I do a private chat and a semi-public one.

But I go to Twitter and Facebook once a day or less (and Twitter primarily because it's the best way for a dear friend to communicate right now, for complex reasons, and another dear friend posts there more than other places on average.) and I make it harder to get there (no apps on my phone, no bookmarks in my browser, notifications on Facebook only for a few specific groups, not individual people).

[alexseanchai]

hmm

An app I've installed but never done much with (I've got it on both Firefox and Chrome on both machines, though, and also on my tablet, and it was on my phone until the SD card crashed and will be again once I've got brain to replace the SD card and reinstall my apps) is Forest. Idea, if you're unfamiliar, is, you plant a tree, and you walk away for 25 min or whatever, and when you come back, you have a tree. If you disturb the growth process, say by using Firefox when you're trying to plant a tree in the Firefox Forest app, then the tree dies. And the objective is to get a whole forest—which means a lot of 25min intervals when you're not internetting.

I don't know if that would be of any use to you, jenett, but maybe it's new and useful info to others around here? And your approach wouldn't work so well for me because I like being involved in realtime conversations on Slack, Discord, and Facebook, but I'm considering trying again to use Forest for myself...

[jenett]

I love the idea of Forest, but it totally doesn't work with what I need.

I use my phone for a ton of things like medication reminders, or checking how much I've been moving so I sit down when I need to - yesterday we had an event at work that meant I was on my feet for about 2 hours with only a tiny break.

I actually do regular chat when I'm home - a MUX instance, and Discord, though I dip in and out of the latter and keep it pretty limited. Depends on what I'm doing.

[rmc28]

Not logging into Facebook or Twitter on my phone is probably the single best thing I do for my mental health. I sometimes lapse and install the Twitter app if I'm away from home for a day or two, but in general I need to minimise my use of either so it stays at "useful social contact" rather than "source of stress".

[jazzyjj]

I've been trying to cut down on Internet/email usage and get out more, but it's honestly kinda not that easy when a large portion of my life depends upon all this cool assistive technology. But more on that in a later reply. But I absolutely agree that getting out as much as possible is a healthy option.