Getting better one day at a time
I’ve long struggled with my eating habits and maintaining a healthy physique. It seems that for months at a time I will be dedicated to being fit and then somehow or other I’ll suddenly fall off the band wagon and lose the progress I had …
It’s called Make Your Bed by Admiral William H. McRaven. It’s a little book of less than 144 pages that I bought sale on my kindle for just $2.99 and read in about an hour. In all honesty, it’s more of a small series of …
Pixels flicker across the screen and light rebounds off my face as I stare blankly at my laptop. The background music fades and my finger twitches almost reflexively, starting up another video.
The light in my room, once warmed by streams of sunlight trickling through the window has transformed to a cool blue. My only illumination comes from my computer screen, less than a foot from my enraptured face. A whole day has seemingly passed by and I’m still in bed, having only made occasional and slight adjustments in my position as my neck has gotten sore throughout the day. I’ve been here for more than four hours… watching YouTube.
My addiction started innocently enough, as a way to wind down in the evening after work, classes, club meetings and putting in a couple hours for my online internship. But slowly it began to replace healthier activities like exercise or chatting with friends as a coping mechanism for stress.
Soon, instead of finding sources for my essay due in three days I would tell myself that first, I’d watch just one YouTube video. Of course, one usually turned into three. In the back of my mind, I knew the videos I was watching were mind-numbing and useless. But that’s partially why I liked them.
Whenever that startling feeling of panic about all the deadlines I was facing or how I would find a job after graduation crept up on me, I would turn on a video and space out. It was like a form of hypnosis. Suddenly all the fear drained out of me and all I could think about was what was in front of me in that moment.
How to make prison pizza? A Sign Language Q&A with a deaf and hearing couple. An Art Professor critiques your RISD portfolio. 120lb girl eats 10,000+ calories. Leah Remini debunks Scientology. You get the idea.
I tried deleting the app on my phone. But I quickly started reaching for my computer instead. I tried using a website blocker on my browser. But I would switch it off to watch “just one video” before getting to work.
In the internet age, one of the worst things about this type of addiction is it’s almost impossible to get away from. I needed my computer and the internet to complete almost all school assignments and to search job boards and apply to open positions. And it’s easy to hide. Since I need my device to do work no one would question why I was on my laptop.
Ironically, I was never able to watch anything I was actually interested in like a debate on moral philosophy or a Spanish documentary on future technological advances. These kinds of videos reminded me that I was an actual human being with goals that I needed to work on and accomplish. What I was really craving was an escape from existence.
When I finally acknowledged this, I was able force myself to sit in the uncomfortability of a barrage of negative thoughts and sort out the reality of my present and try to plan for a somewhat better future.
I haven’t yet cut out the habit entirely, but I’ve been watching closer to 45 minutes a day instead of hours and that number is slowly decreasing.
p.s. I highly recommend you read Domingo Cullen’s piece for the Guardian on YouTube addiction as it helped me clarify some of my thoughts and was inspiration for this short meditation on my own addiction.
While rethinking why I stopped keeping up with my blog last year, I realized one bug reason was a lack of a plan. I had a few ideas for my first couple of projects, but after that I chose randomly, and I chose things that …
I have decided to resurrect Fully Balanced Fridays! I realized how helpful it was to occasionally track a day of eating and figure out what kinds of foods I needed to include to get all micro and macro nutrients. So here’s what I’ve been eating …
This month, I decided to start simple. I will be focusing on building one of the most minimal and least time-consuming habits—making my bed each morning.
I had been doing this quite consistently over the past year but after graduating school and taking some time off, the habit sort of fell by the wayside.
Now, in the renaissance of my blog and monthly goals, I have decided to focus less on fun projects or large-scale goals and more on small habits that will slightly improve my life and over time become second nature.
To be clear, it’s not that I necessarily care that much about the physical act of making my bed. Although I do agree with former navy SEAL, Admiral William H. McCraven that it provides a small sense of accomplishment each morning that can spill over and give you momentum for the rest of the day.
More than being a person who performs the action of making her bed in the morning, I hope to become the kind of person who makes her bed every morning. One survey commissioned by Sleepopolis, a company aspiring to be the “most trusted and comprehensive sleep resource,” found that people who make their beds are more likely to be morning people, wake up without an alarm, and take shorter naps. Another survey (funded by a mattress company) found that 74% of people who made their beds in the morning felt accomplished at the end of the day compared to 50% of those who didn’t.
The 1 minute each morning that I spend actually making my bed won’t automatically make me that kind of person, but you have to start somewhere.
So, I’ll end it with this:
“You get those mundane things right, the things you do every day. You concentrate on them and you make them pristine. It’s like you’ve got 80% of your life put together. These little things that are right in front of us, they’re not little… and they’re hard to set right. And if you set them right it has a rippling effect.” -Jordan Peterson
I don’t want to restart my blog When I first had the idea to create this blog, it felt like it could be my salvation. The plan to focus on one habit or skill a month that I could improve at gave me a spark …
The other day I stumbled upon a video called 52 Weeks to Change My Life. In the video the speaker, a deaf woman named Ashley, iterated many of the thoughts and worries I’ve had for the future. But her idea of focusing her attention on …
Did you know that Scientologists count the years starting from 1950 when their leader L. Ron Hubbard first published the “sacred” text of Dianetics? (By that logic the year is now 70 AD)
But no, I’m not trying to start my own religious cult by suggesting that today, February 27th is the first day of the New Year. What I am saying is that we often limit ourselves to certain dates or timeframes to start something new.
Tomorrow is a big one. Tomorrow I’ll tidy up that desk that I keep piling papers and knickknacks onto. Tomorrow I’ll update my resume and apply to that job. Tomorrow I’ll call my mom. Tomorrow I’ll go to the gym. Better yet tomorrow morning. Because if the morning passes, I’ll just have to tell myself I’ll do it the next day.
New Years is the same way. We make new goals that we don’t have to start working on until the new year comes. December 31st is the day of “My diet starts tomorrow.”
But what if a random Thursday at the end of February is the first day of the new year. Or maybe you’re reading this on a Wednesday in June in 2026. That seems like a pretty good first day as well.
My point is I want to start anew with my blog and I need to stop letting excuses get in my way. So, for me, today is the first day of 2020.
It’s been nearly four months since I’ve kept to a consistent posting schedule. And sadly I can’t say it’s not for a lack of trying, because that’s exactly what it’s been—a lack of trying. At first, being back in my last semester of university was …