I've still got some major ones in me. A collection of useless, unwanted and distracting set of vestigial thoughts, feelings, and distractions. I shall address them one at a time. As I think the last few months have been leading to this ultimate goal. To let the truly unimportant, slide. This is a lot trickier than one might imagine. But as always I think it's easy, and I shall let my ignorance guide me through it. It's worked for me before so why stop now? I don't own a lot of things, I could pack the important things at home in one suitcase, including my desktop, monitor and keyboard. So that is not the focus here, luckily for me my parents are hoarders so I've learned that lesson early. What's left is the mothership. Something I know I can deal with as I have before as a teenager for four years, living without distraction.
Freeing myself from the telly
Video based distractions have been my Achilles' heel for as long as I can remember. I did some back of napkin math and it's fucking insane. I've spent about thirty five thousand hours of my life distracted. That's four years. That is insanity. So this thing that I am going against has a strong foothold on my life, yet I don't think it'll hold up for long. Distraction is the effect, I need to focus on the cause. So the first task is to observe all the things that happen before I start yearning for distraction. It's going to suck anyways so might as well go after the root cause. In the last year I've found it to be the most successful way to overcome habits that get in my way. Binge eating and Porn for example. It is harder, but overtime it gets easier, whereas the will power game is one that only gets harder for me. It does not work for me. Yet observing and understanding the problem is something that comes to me naturally and I enjoy, hence why I'm drawn to programming. So I'll stick to my strengths on this one, this might be my toughest quest yet. Also, there couldn't have been a more favorable time.
The more I look beneath my perceived flaws the more I learn about myself. The goal is not to be flawless, quite the contrary. The more I look within, the more I realize I'm just like everyone else. There is nothing special about me. Like most I am anger, joy, loss, pain, pleasure, clueless, stupid, intelligent, bold, a coward, shame, brave, lust, passion, love, hate, greed and a glutton. I am all of the above, I'm not special. The freedom it brings is indescribable. It does not mean I give into every desire that comes up but rather understand that these desires will show up and they are a part of you. They are just desires or feelings. They are not good or bad, they just are. They don't need to be ignored, only felt. They feel like they feel, one is different from the other, yet they are parts of you. I tried to ignore them for a long time, it only led to amplification of those feelings. They too only desire for their time in the sun, to be felt, once you do that, they go back to where they came from. It's a lot fucking harder than it sounds. Yet it's not impossible. If I can do it at my complete lowest point in my life. Anyone can. Sometimes I fail, quite a lot of times in fact. Yet all those tiny victories teach me more about myself than any book ever written ever.
So for now, there is only habit that I'm up against. This might be the biggest one yet. There is something exciting about that. It's time for a fucking quest, bitches.