For the sake of my mental health...

I watched an interview yesterday with Maynard James Keenan of Tool, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer. Gen and I have been listening to the new Tool album Fear Inoculum all weekend (which is amazing by the way) and we stumbled across this interview on Youtube that had been recorded about a month previous, and it seemed like a perfect watch considering.

A lot of what MJK was saying struck a chord with me as I had been having some serious thoughts about how I'm spending my spare time, and how much of it I waste on social media, mostly making myself miserable. MJK hit on the social media culture and how it is an addiction, and his message to "turn off your phones and go outside" resonated with me, as I was already self assessing my own addiction.

Harking back to many moons ago when I set out to do a life reboot, which now some years down the line I have failed to follow through on, I am once again looking at trying to make a lifestyle change for the better. Whereas last time there was a large focus on trying to focus on my physical health, this time I feel the focus needs to be on improving my mental health, and I think a large part of that is assessing how much time I'm spending on social media. My physical health will still be a focus, and my return to playing cricket has been a part of that.

There's a lot going on in the world at the minute which is depressing, concerning and downright terrifying. Facebook, where I spend so much of my time, has become a constant flood of reminders of everything shit that's going on in the world and no amount of cat memes and doggo vids can break it up enough. Don't get me started on Twitter.

The more time I spend on my phone checking my feeds, the more miserable it makes me. Brexit, Trump, toxic comments from toxic people, (insert relevant)phobia... the list goes on. I'm not saying that apathy is the answer, but for the sake of my own mental health it seems like an appealing route to go down.

The trouble I think with social media is that it concentrates all this vileness and gives you a thick focused soup of it all, and makes you forget that there is more to the world and life than all this crap.

So without saying that this is another attempt at a Life Reboot I am pushing further to make some lifestyle changes to improve my well being, both physically and mentally. The first step is to try and pull myself away from social media to an extent. I'm sad to say that I don't think I would be capable of giving up Facebook altogether as I do rely on it for a lot of my day to day planning. Call ups for cricket matches are organised on the team's Facebook page, Magic: The Gathering events and tournaments are all planned and scheduled via Facebook. So I would need to keep myself connected there in order to manage my actual social life.

What I can do though is spend less time glued to my phone scrolling down my feed. Stop myself checking Facebook (and Twitter) every five minutes. If I can cut my Facebook usage down to those elements that are essential than that will be a step in the right direction.

Further steps I've had in mind beyond better managing my use of social media is looking at how I spend my spare time, and the pressures and responsibilities I impose on myself.

I get very self conscious about projects I start and struggle to complete, such as the graphic novel I've been working on. I haven't touched it for several months and I do get hung up on the fact that it sits unfinished, but I have to acknowledge that it's okay if I don't finish it. It's a project I am doing for my own enjoyment, I have no responsibility to anyone else to finish it. It's okay to work on it when I want to, not because I feel that I have to.

Similarly I'm looking at a lot of things in my life and asking myself "am I doing this because I want to or because I feel obligated to?" For example, Magic: The Gathering is one of my biggest passions and I play as often as I can, going to Friday Night Magic every week. However one Friday I realised I wasn't actually in the mood and fancied a Friday off to do other things, but I felt obligated to go as it's what I do on a Friday. I was only going because it was my routine, not because I actually wanted to go. So I had to convince myself that it was okay to miss a week for no other reason than I just didn't want to go that week. It's not because I'd lost my passion for the game, I simply wanted a break and do something else.

For some this may seem quite straight forward, but for someone like me who's brain works like it does, breaking a routine like this can be very difficult.

Really this has all started recently when I realised that as someone who professes to love music and reading, I spend so little of my spare time listening to music and reading. So going forward, I'm going to spend more time with the TV, computer and phone off and a lot more time with a good album and a good book. Maybe spend more time outside going for walks.

PS

Instagram is okay, little depresses me there.
PPS
Also, I would implore all of you to turn off your phones and spend more time outside.