Going Minimal on Digital #5

28th March 2022

This is a bit of a big deal actually: earlier today I was like, “I have nothing to do… nothing is required of me. And… I’m not anxious” and usually, when I find myself with absolutely NOTHING to do – by which I mean, no chores need doing, no house admin need my attention, Gabriel doesn’t need me, my mum doesn’t need me, Aidan doesn’t need me, I don’t feel compelled to check in on Discord, nothing to watch on TV, don’t need to eat, or go to the bathroom, heck even sleep… Like I can just automatically devolve into an anxious state, like boredom is a trigger??? And today I was like… woah. Wait. I… I feel like… absolutely nothing. I feel kinda zen. Is this what cats feel like? LOL

I literally sat there on my parents couch (Gabriel had gone down for his nap there) and I was like, huh… okay. I… I think I’m gonna sleep, too. And it wasn’t an anxiety driven sleep – like “I MUST SLEEP NOW TO CATCH UP ON MY LACK OF SLEEP” – it wasn’t driven by an anxious purpose. I was just like, “I’ve daydreamed at work about having the ability to just relax and close my eyes and sleep for a while with zero guilt or responsibilities, and I’m kinda there right now.”

“So… I’m gonna get comfy and sleep.”

I want to add that this is a totally alien feeling and concept to me, especially of late.

I don’t think I felt that way truly since I was a child.

I think it is truly dawning on me now how much constant stimulation even by the form of “just checking the news” has really affected our mental health. And until that moment it never really seemed like that big a deal, other than the obvious that it was bad.

I had no idea I was the frog sitting in hot water [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog ].

Going Minimal on Digital #3

19th March 2022

Over the last few days, I’ve been keeping track of my various thoughts and feelings about my digital minimalism process. There’s a LOT of it out there – and I am going to put it out there for Patron Pixels to check out. But for those who simply don’t have the time or inclination to read the full version, here’s the gist of it:

Technology, ultimately, doesn’t have a lot of intrinsic value in my day to day life.

Ever since I removed its ability to constantly prod me with notifications, I feel I keep my mobile phone around with me mostly as a security blanket. It doesn’t really serve much other purpose now, because there are no games on it, or anything on there that can just push content in front of me unless I put in the effort to find something specific.

For example, I used to find myself constantly browsing the Amazon app on my phone. Since I removed it, I’m suddenly very much aware that I don’t feel compelled to look up 50 alternatives to a pot rack, or compare the prices of 6 different headphones, or scroll through the reviews of a decal for a Nintendo Switch I’d never actually get.

I did find myself initially checking to see if anyone had messaged me, or posted anything interesting in the Discord server(s), but much to my disappointment I found that nobody had done much of either, and so I began to leave the phone simply on the table or kitchen counter and get on with my day, until I personally wanted to message someone or check if they had responded – an hour or two later.

On a more profound level, I’ve rediscovered what it means to have true mental solitude, and it’s been a strange and liberating experience.  I go into why mental solitude – or boredom – is so important in my more in-depth posts, which will show up below.

Anyway. That’s the summary. If you really do want to read my inner monologue as I experienced it, it’s below for you – unedited mind, so there’ll be some mistakes and rambling sentences. But you’re welcome to it all, dear Pixel. 🙂

— Chorna

=-=-=-=-= UNEDITED AND UNABRIDGED =-=-=-=-=

15th March 2022

So here’s the 30 day process for digital decluttering that’s suggested by Cal Newport:

The Digital Declutter Process

1. Put aside a thirty-day period during which you will take a break from optional technologies in your life.

2. During this thirty-day break, explore and rediscover activities and behaviors that you find satisfying and meaningful.

3. At the end of the break, reintroduce optional technologies into your life, starting from a blank slate. For each technology you reintroduce, determine what value it serves in your life and how specifically you will use it so as to maximize this value.

So I think I’m at the point of figuring out which technologies are optional. I already did a cull of this, but there are others I’m starting to notice.

Google News on phone – it’s there, on a left swipe. I didn’t check it much but I did decide to check it this morning and found myself feeling a familiar kind of brain-numb boredom as I consumed things it suggested I may find interesting while also thinking very much “I really don’t care about this, this is pure clickbait”.

So I think I’m going to look at disabling this despite originally feeling I could maintain a good and sparse use of this in the day.

There are topics that DO interest me, and ones that I’d like to get more specific information about:

• Science and technology
• Archaeology and history
• Psychology and social sciences (anthropology, sociology)
• Child development
• Mental health and wellbeing
• Food and cooking
• Maintaining close friendships

The last part pops into my head now as I go through my Discord and realise there are people I care about and find interesting and stimulating to talk to.

This is actually where I’ve felt a little bit stuck. I realise my social network is incredibly small, and physical contact with real people for social interactions is at an all time low.

I remember as a teenager feeling quite isolated because I didn’t have a large social network, and when in the late 90s I finally gained access to the Internet, I remember feeling extremely vitalised by the intellectual stimulation from people all around the world via email.

Since becoming a mother I realise how important it is to ensure Gabriel gets lots of face-to-face contact with other people. The core reasons for this are to pick up social cues, and to learn how to manage his emotions in social settings.

I’m realising that while I benefitted from his in my own youth without the distraction of technological gadgets, I can extremely easily under-estimate the impact my son getting most of his emotional gratification from digital devices and toys alone can have on his ability to read social situations.

So yeah… it’s finally dawning on me that I really need to put in a lot more effort to get out of the house and mingle with other people, and that I have to find solutions to the things that I feel prevent me from being able to do this.

Issues:

1. Lack of finances

This has been an ongoing issue for us for a long time. It’s sad but true that most of the good toddler-centric activity groups ask for a small amount of money to contribute to the cost of materials, access to sites and sustenance. However even with costs being spread out among groups of people, the cumulative cost of activities like this on a week to week, month to month basis adds up against an already minimal earning bracket. So often it can be disheartening to look at activities knowing I can’t afford to go every time like I would want to.

2. Lack of energy

Working most evenings from 8pm to midnight as I do, getting a maximum 5hrs sleep a night takes its toll on an individual even when you’re trying your very best to maintain an active day for a toddler. So sometimes… I admit it, I just can’t be bothered to get out of my PJs, or force him to get ready to go out.

3. Lack of social connection

It’s always much nicer when you can go with someone. The journey to a place with an adult companion can help lighten the load of bringing a toddler along and ease the logistics of it all. From keeping an eye on your child and ensuring they’re comfortable and alive, to making sure you don’t forget anything they’ll potentially need and keeping an eye on the clock so that you’re not going when your kid is about to get cranky and tired or hungry… at any point in time there’s about 50 things you’re calculating, assessing and preparing for when you’re out with a toddler, especially if you want to be a responsive parent and not a reactive one. But trying to find someone else in the household or in your social network who can be around when you need the extra adult support is neigh on impossible these days. I am lucky, I have my mum, but she’s older and not as mobile as she once was, and sometimes it can feel like I’m caring for two people instead of one toddler because I’m then considering her arthritis and limitations on speed and movement. This isn’t to be misinterpreted as me thinking my mum is a burden – hardly. She’s wonderful company. But understanding she has limited capacities is necessary when planning where we go together.

So what’s the solution?

Lack of finances:

There are loads of free meet up groups. I think it’s time I found one, or made better use of my existing mum’s social network. There are parks to go to, we have the beach here, and then there’s relatives I haven’t seen in a while. There are opportunities, and even things like going to the shops or window shopping can be an activity outdoors.

Lack of energy:

I think I should give myself a break here and realise maybe I don’t need to have enough energy to do something social every day of the week. Perhaps twice a week is enough, with maintaining contact with family members throughout.

Lack of social connection:

I think this is two-fold. In one way this is about Gabriel and the impact it will have on him, and in another this about me, and my own social connections and stimulation. I think Gabriel’s social interactions can be addressed as above, but my own are a bit different. I benefit from a lifetime of face to face interactions, and now have adjusted to purely online. However I don’t think I could continue this way in the long-run, as it does have an impact on Gabriel, too, especially if he will be modelling after me.

There are friendships that have evolved from face to face to a purely online one – friends who have moved abroad, or from whom we’ve moved further away ourselves.

But then there are also connections I’ve kept and maintained purely online but have found myself feeling disappointed by the growing silences between us, as life pushes in between us.

This is going to take some time. So I think I need to focus on one thing at a time. I’ll start with seeing when I can connect with people this week.

My relationship with my phone is starting to change. I’m seeing it less as that thing that I want to be looking at if I’m not doing something else, and I’m starting to think of it more as a tool for people to contact me. Even things like “having entertainment to hand” doesn’t seem as relevant any longer. By that I mean YouTube, random articles being pushed to me, or having Netflix on the phone. I’ve been quite okay letting these go because I already can access Netflix on the TV for instance.

I find myself contemplating a lot what items I truly need, if anything, to help me feel like I’m doing the most valuable thing at that moment. It’s difficult, because I am all too aware of the mindset of “is this productive” creeping in, versus “is this meaningful”.

What I’m finding, oddly, is that I don’t have to be doing much of anything in order to be doing meaningful stuff. Sometimes, just being in the room, not saying anything, quietly sitting and resting is meaningful enough. And that’s a dramatic change from “oh, have I changed the bedsheets this week yet? Wait, should I make a start on dinner already? Have I checked in on my friends enough today?”

Frankly all of that stuff – thinking of ways to be busy so that I’m busy – is exhausting!

16th March 2022

I’ve only used my phone today to check a couple of messages. I barely got any, and received a couple of incoming calls I was waiting for.

Turns out I don’t need my phone very much, and it’s really starting to make me wonder why they’re so expensive if fundamentally we don’t need them that much.

I used the camera function, but I have the photos backed up on the Cloud, so I can view them on desktop and enjoy them there.

Since removing apps that I don’t actually need to use on my phone like Facebook, YouTube, etc, notification counts has gone down dramatically, and I’ve even started to notice where notifications pop up in general anywhere else and instead of finding them intriguing, I now find them actually intrusive. So I ignore them or try to find a way to turn those off.

However WhatsApp continues to be a useful app to me, and I’m considering unarchiving a bunch of conversations, or changing the settings so that archived conversations pop back into active chats list rather than remaining archived even if new messages pop up.

I don’t even truly need to check Discord on my phone, because most of the conversations are so asynchronous that I can respond an hour or two later and the conversation wouldn’t have been terribly negatively impacted. This is perhaps more of a reflection of the type of conversations happening on Discord, rather than a sign of how I feel about the people on there.

Having the time to think rather than being distracted by the phone constantly has meant I’m able to focus more on other tasks around the house that are important to me, such as cooking, or cleaning up a bit more. I managed to get a few tasks done today which I had been putting off for some time such as the laundry and changing the bedsheets, and I’ve also been thinking a lot more about Gabriel and how he is interacting, or not interacting with things. He’s certainly seemingly benefitting from the increased attention on him. Not that I wasn’t paying attention before, but sometimes it really was the case that seeing mummy staring at the phone probably made him wonder what’s so bloody interesting about that device.

I’ve noticed he’s been playing a lot more make-believe, and doesn’t need the phone or TV screen open to get him stimulated. But even when the TV is on, Gabriel has started mimicking more, whereas before he would simply sit and watch. I do believe that having me spend less time on the phone has inadvertently encouraged Gabriel to spend more time away from the screen, too.

I have found it much easier to fall asleep as well. I think because I’m not compelled to look at the phone at all during the evening, the lack of screen stimulation is helping me to fall asleep faster – unless I am really just that tired, too. 🙂 likely both!

I currently use my phone to play some music when getting Gabriel to sleep but I think I may try focussing on using one of our old spare phones to be dedicated to that instead.

17th March 2022

I find myself reflecting on the relationships I have online, and which ones I feel are the most meaningful.

One friend stands out the most both for consistency and reciprocity. I’m glad I know this friend, and we use WhatsApp, which I have changed the settings for to make it feel less overwhelming for me. Still thinking about the usefulness of other apps in general.

19th March 2021

I find myself having time to relax finally

.I’ve been watching the video which initially triggered this digital declutter and each time I re-watch it, something else sinks in. I’ve traditionally been this way with documentaries – I will have them on repeat as I mull over the details. I actually did my revision this way for university, too – I would listen to the dictated notes, type them out and re-read them.

Anyway, I think I’m finally feeling the withdrawal symptoms fade as I finally feel like I am comfortable with the notion of mental solitude again.

One thing that really struck me quite recently – and I have already written about this – the fact that Gabriel is part of a generation that can very easily never experience true unstimulated boredom. I’m beginning to realise the difference between his generation and mine. While I grew up learning how to be bored and how to process my experiences, but children who go from one form of stimulus straight to another, with no downtime to do absolutely nothing, have been shown to exhibit anxiety which can be exacerbated to depression or worse.

I was previously quite happy with Gabriel using technology and screens because I felt I had done quite a lot to curate the content he had access to there. My main focus had been to ensure he was accessible educational content, things that stimulated his learning and curiosity.

What I hadn’t factored in was how important it was to encourage him to have that time away from any stimulation – not just a screen. So things like not putting toys out immediately for him to play with, or not having the TV on or the radio on so that he had the opportunity to just be in the moment with his own thoughts for a while, was as important as me taking the time to ensure what he was being exposed to was “good” content.

As a result, I’ve started hiding his devices away and not turning to tech for entertainment as a default. He’s not really noticed to be honest that they’re not around or on as much, and I’ve watched as he’s started taking his time to examine and mull over what he’d like to play with today. Sometimes he does go for a device, he will hand me my phone and point and ask to play. I’ll say “let me get your phone, sweetheart”, and usually after a few short minutes he will get distracted by something else and drop his phone on the floor. I’ll put it away until he asks for it again next time. His activities with his toys have diversified, but this is likely as much to do with the fact he is 2 and a half years old and still developing, as it is with the fact he’s having more down time to explore and experiment with more traditional analogue toys. I’ve watched him take Mummy Pig and Daddy Pig and make them kiss, or feed them, or put clusters of toys together then decide they were all migrating from his bedroom to the lounge. And sometimes, actually quite often throughout the day, he simply wants to climb into his bed and try doing a roly poly, babbling to himself and just chilling in the comfort of his personal space.

These days he’s also started asking to go out. He will point at the front door and lead me to the handle, and I’ll ask him if he wants to go to the park or see his Nanu. He usually has a clear idea of what he’d like to do, and this has been good for me, too, as it’s made me also leave the house more.

For the older generations, simulations of outdoor activities can be substitutes for a while because we still have the actual experience of those activities somewhere in our memories to fall back on and recreate the true value of those experiences. Our children and newer generations don’t, and so simulation is just adding on top of all the other continuous stimuli they’re receiving, without having a beat to process it and reflect and adjust their sense of perception, self and value – whether that’s self value, or the value of something else.

No wonder self-esteem is becoming such a huge issue. Self-esteem is largely based on such moments of decompression, when we process and measure our experiences against how we feel and what we want as a result. If you’re never able to do that and instead are constantly fed a message and narrative of want, need, desire, must, have, don’t, do, yes, no… it’d be bewildering.

It IS bewildering. Isn’t it?

Going Minimal on Digital #2

13th March 2022

It’s been 2 days since I started my digital minimalism efforts.

I’ve not really had a specific plan in place on how I was going to do this, but one thing I knew: I was going to start with my mobile phone, by removing things on it that were asking for my attention when I didn’t want it to take me away from the things that mattered to me. What mattered to me? My son.

So. Based on that, on the 11th I removed the following: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook’s Messenger. I disabled YouTube on my phone, both because I prefer to watch YouTube videos on the PC monitor, and because I didn’t want my toddler son to have unfettered access to YouTube should he get a hold of my mobile – which he often does.

The primary reason these were gone was because they monetise my information, and they push monetised content at me that I don’t actually usually want to see. So the meaningful content was minimal. Messenger was mostly gone because I simply don’t use it.

I left on apps that I felt were meaningful to me, on a day to day basis. These included: WhatsApp, as this is the primary virtual way I communicate with my family members. However I did do some conversation archiving and culling. I left on Discord, as this is how I check in on most of my friends, although I disabled notifications because I wanted to check in when I wanted to check in, and I’ve also left on Teams as I felt work messages were important, though I think I will be changing the settings so that I’m only notified when there are team-wide alerts. Not quite sure if that means I need access to it at all, but it certainly has come in handy in the past, especially since I sometimes like to share timely articles I spot about work related topics to my line managers and account managers.

What I noticed was that these things were based on interacting with people, and weren’t about entertainment or keeping my finger on the pulse of news or information.

The 12th, I felt quite disconnected though. I kept picking up my phone, thinking I was going to get something interesting out of it, but without the apps to distract me, I checked Discord then WhatsApp and got bored pretty quickly as there were no new messages worth reading.

So when my son wanted to play his games on my phone, I left him have it. That meant I missed messages from my mum, and a couple of calls, but thankfully they weren’t urgent (otherwise she’d call my husband), and I ended up sleeping more during the day.

I ended up feeling quite aimless and a bit blue for most of the day and while I was used to reaching into my CBT toolset to manage my anxieties and low mood, it wasn’t until the day after that I realised I was likely feeling the come-down of endorphins from constant stimulation from a digital device. This was really telling, and I was quite shocked to find the withdrawal symptoms of digital addiction applied to me, despite my deliberate and seemingly content choice to cut it all out of my life.

By the 13th though, today, I felt much better already. I didn’t feel compelled to have my phone on me constantly, and as a result my son didn’t seem to want to be distracted by it as much either. I felt mentally quite free to be more in the moment, and recognise that being bored wasn’t a bad thing. I was actually quite content to simply watch my son play, and not be pulled by a device saying “hey, you really need to see this”. Or wonder if it had something for me to see, even.

When I came onto the PC, I felt less anxious also. I had a couple of places to check for new messages, then I was essentially done. Even the somewhat compulsive browsing of Amazon that I had been doing – likely fed by my scanning the app on my phone also – was reduced to not happening at all.

In the last two days I’ve done more writing than I’ve done in 2 months. Arguably 2 years.

It’s been quite telling.

I’ve already made plans for what I’d like to do tomorrow that uses my electronic devices. I have a few audiobooks I’ve been meaning to go through, and I also have a couple of ebooks, too. So I will reinstall Audible onto my phone to see if this is a better use of the device. I am uncertain if I’ll get any reading done on my phone, but let’s just see how this plays out…

Going Minimal on Digital #1

11th March 2022

Is it anxiety or something else?

I think absolutely everyone who’s spoken to me, or seen me speaking, knows that I have been on a journey toward minimalism for at least the last 3 years now.

As spring arrived this year (2022), I finally achieved about 90% of the decluttering of our home, and it has given me such a euphoric sense of achievement that recently I had quite a profound revelation while laying in bed, waiting to fall asleep.

Having battled with anxiety most of my life, I thought I had gotten used to recognising those tell-tale negative sensations that let me know something wasn’t right.

I often attributed these to signs that my inner monologue was going awry, and after years of consistent self-reflection and therapy, I finally feel like I’m at a stage where I can stop myself with some semblance of determined control and take a step back and examine these negative thoughts and address them in a more rational and deliberate way,

However, this particular night I found myself frustrated, because having pumped the brakes on myself and taken pause to examine why I felt so restless, I was confused by my physical symptoms.

I couldn’t quite pinpoint any particular thought that would have caused me to feel negatively, and yet here I was, in bed, and feeling unable to sleep.

So I did something that my 20-something year old self would have felt was contrived (and therefore couldn’t possibly be an authentic action): I prayed.

I posed my question to God, the universe, the Greater Knowledge out there, and asked them to help me get a sense of what was causing me to feel so agitated. And honest to God, I had a moment of clarity come back to me, reflected in the pool of my thoughts:

You’re not anxious, Chorna. You have energy again.

My eyebrows shot up. Woah, what? – What?? I have energy?

I couldn’t remember the last time I felt I had a genuine surplus of energy. A surplus of energy that I could use in any way I wanted – and not just energy that felt like it was being sucked out of me by worry and depression.

It was an extremely personal moment, and one that was full of joy and surprise. It was the nice kind of surprise, the nice kind of unravelling and reveal. Not the sort I often had in therapy where a veil was lifted and I saw trauma clarified. No, no. This was more like opening the freezer and discovering there was still an ice cream cone sitting there that nobody had yet claimed.

Galvanised by this revelation, I found myself suddenly not so pissed off that I couldn’t sleep. Instead, I lay contently in bed, mild smile on my face, feeling relieved and relaxed that actually, tomorrow might be a good day to start doing something I had been hoping to do for some time because now I had the energy to do it.I didn’t question if when I woke up I would still have this newly realised energy. This surplus felt very separate from physical energy. It was a type of creative, spiritual, mental energy that I had lacked for such a very long time.

The task I set my mind to was at the very instance thinking about digital minimalism.

Beginning my digital declutter

It’s been quite common for me to withdraw digitally (“socially”) from online spaces. I can be so very prolific for months at a time, and then simply vanish, becoming a digital hermit of sorts. The constantly oscillating between extremes is frustrating for me, too, because believe it or not, maintaining the bookmarks, the order of apps and chats on my various devices is a job unto itself, and I deeply crave consistency despite being at present unable to deliver it to myself let alone others. Whether I’m online or not, I like to keep stuff efficiently organised. If I am going to message your eyeballs off, or if I’m going to curtail your responses back, I wanna make sure I do it my way, after all.Maybe that’s the bitch boss in me. I’m not apologetic.

Digital minimalism was a way for me to apply the wonderful order and calm that I’ve brought to my material surroundings onto the other space I inhabit – the virtual one.

But doing this was going to take some effort, because virtual is inherently quite fluid and intangible. So where do you even begin to quantify where the virtual you begins and ends?

I decided to revisit the concepts I’d read about in Cal Newport’s book Digital Minimalism: On Living Better With Less Technology a while ago. But rather than going through the whole book again – both because I no longer owned the physical book, and because the Kindle version I had meant I’d be using my phone (which I distinctly didn’t want to do at the time), I instead found an interesting and very well structured interview / discussion by Rich Roll. If you want to see the video I watched on the PC. It’s here [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L-Uoo4VrIk ] from around 2018. I highly recommend you watch it if you’re remotely interested in the impact digital social media has on our ability to think.

As I watched, I made a few notes.

Here they are, verbatim:

• Chorna — Today at 12:01
• Intentional uses of tech
• Evaluable what value they truly bring
• What is my philosophy for use of tech?
• What activities bring me true value and meaningfulness and purpose?
• What I use
• How and when I use it
• WHERE <— phone on PC?
• Notifications OFF.
• Calendar, yes
• Telephone, yes
• SMS, yes
• Whatsapp? — prune.
• Work email: schedule a time.
• Facebook – zero value
• Twitter – zero value
• Instagram – zero value
• Kindle – reading OFF phone
• I care about faith, philosophy of life and living and being authentic.
• When I check YouTube
• Work schedule – set up my regular away message.
• talk directly to the person – move away from email / text. How to address with WFH? Video? ? Facial
• Chorna — Today at 12:30
• Amazon – browsing, window shopping.
• Having a broad range of skills. Administrative, creative,
• How much media can I make not-algorithm generated???
• When i’m working, I’m working.
• social network AS A FAMILY. Not as an individual.
• “why are we doing this? how is this serving us?”
• what is stoic philosophy
• Free Solo documentary
• Chorna — Today at 12:55
• is this all privilege?
• FOMO – why. Why is this important to us.
• Advertising – if they need to tell you about it, do you really need it?
• take off monetized apps
• analogue leisure activities.

Taking a look at these notes, it’s clear that I wasn’t too worried about spelling and syntax. 😉 But I could start to see some of my philosophies crystallising.

For one thing, I started to realise that one thing that made me feel quite unsettled about using social media was the fragmented nature of it. Platforms, in the plural, were all vying for my attention. I identified a few as I was listening: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, Medium.

And now as I reflect some more: Pinterest, YouTube, Google News on my phone, Email – personal, Teams, Email – work, Amazon on my phone, Discord.

What was actually important to me, though, when and why?

Analysis of digital platforms in my life

Facebook – no it’s really not important to me. I’ve whittled down the friends list so much to people who interacted with me, and recently even they have become quiet themselves. I’m not posting as much recently, because I have nothing personal to share, and the activity I get on those don’t go much beyond a token like. I’m not getting the deeper intellectual conversations I crave from relationships on this platform. I feel bored and somewhat annoyed by the constant pushing of advertisements and the infuriating short videos. For work it is important that I retain access so that I can still be familiar with how the platform works.

Instagram – no, as above, it’s not really important to me any longer. I used to use it originally as a way to share images and moments of Gabriel’s life with people who couldn’t be near us. However we’ve since switched over to more direct ways to send these memories across, and they seldom got comments or interactions on the images. I became distinctly aware as I was posting that I was maintaining a look, rather than sharing something authentic. Again, it is important that I keep an eye on the platform so that I can still be familiar with how the platform works for work purposes.

Whatsapp

WhatsApp – this is actually useful to me. However I was becoming aware of how I was using it to replace meaningful face to face interaction with text-based conversations. I don’t have a lot of people I talk to regularly on there, however there is a group of people on there with whom contact and conversation would otherwise be impossible on a regular basis, and these people matter to me. I recognised and have considered changing up the way I communicate with some people on WhatsApp as a result, opting for more personable video calls where possible, and looking at which relationships I can make more face to face instead, as literally as possible. It’s got no real work purpose, but I recognise it’s owned by Meta / Facebook, so… it’s all part of that same digital ecosystem.

Twitter – I did a massive declutter of this platform when I discovered I was pregnant. I have never found this platform particularly enjoyable, and it has almost always introduced me to some content that left me feeling disturbed or generally worse. I don’t think I can do much more with this platform than I already have in terms of minimising its ability to leak negativity into my life, however I also don’t feel compelled to check it much anyway. However it does have some professional relevance. So as a work tool I’m willing to maintain access to it, but it certainly holds on personal importance to me.

Medium – I have a tense relationship with this platform. It’s clear to me that as a digital creator this is an important space to create what would be considered credible work. However I find it puts a level of pressure on me to keep up appearances, rather than to encourage me to be my authentic self. It’s fine as a professional tool, but I don’t have the inclination to maintain this for any personal reason.

Pinterest – I appreciate what this platform is useful for, but as an individual I have no need for it. It’s quite an anxiety inducing experience for me, as its appearance mimics a lot of attention seeking behaviour.

YouTube – I use YouTube a fair bit, especially when I am researching conversations on topics. Someone will have made a video about whatever I’m looking for, which is both a good and bad thing, I suppose. Either way, I’ve learned to use this platform as a tool, rather than rely on it to push content to me. I could use some decluttering here by going through my subscriptions which have become quite diverse due to also following a lot of different channels for Gabriel’s sake. I’ve also got a search history that could do with some culling so that I can help the algorithm figure out what to suggest to me better and more efficiently.

Google News on my phone – I have started to rely on this more the same way I used to rely on Facebook. I would refresh and something new would show up. However even now I notice how the same type of content shows up, and it’s started to feel like a niche spread of views conveniently reassuring me that what I’m thinking is right, rather than exposing me to a variety of perspectives and giving me food for thought.

Email – personal – nobody emails me. But I’ve traditionally enjoyed emails, and I’ve always enjoyed writing emails – long meandering monologues where I can get into the deeper things in life. Shame that this platform has become just another way for people to advertise their shit to me. I’ve been utilising the Report Spam button a lot. The only important emails I get here are ones from utility companies. So I think how I ultimately end up using my inbox may become part of my other big project: financially managing myself.

Teams – I have this installed on my phone, as historically I’ve missed opportunities for work shifts and/or felt extremely anxious about missing work shifts because I was so focussed on Gabriel. However I think I’m coming to a more healthier point in my day to day experience where this may no longer be required on my phone.

Email – work – again, I have access to my work emails on my phone because it has meant I’ve been able to get access to opportunities for work that I felt anxious about missing in the past. I think this still serves a good purpose, but I probably don’t need to access it as often as I think. I can easily schedule this.

Amazon on my phone – I have habitually used Amazon more as a “solution phonebook” whenever I’ve been faced with a task I couldn’t complete on my own. Rather than looking at something and wondering how to fix it, I would consider replacing it with a new one instead. Hence having Amazon to hand, because I could easily look up the cost and whether it was deliverable. But what’s happened as a result is that now Amazon is constantly pushing items at me to consider buying. Despite literally having no money to purchase things with, and the inner discipline I’ve developed to avoid buying things frivolously since adopting minimalism as a whole, it still takes up a lot of my mental energy to ignore its constantly attempts to grab my attention.

Discord – arguably the only way I truly socialise, I have access to and manage several places but even I would agree that I have the capacity to only truly exist in one at a time. I think the core take-away from this platform is that there are some people I want to maintain contact with, however the frequency with which I maintain contact with these people fluctuates a lot, and when I do finally connect with them, having a physical conversation that’s longer than five minutes at a time is virtually impossible. There’s a number of factors for this, but the primary ones are that I have responsibilities as a mother I happily attend to as soon as the needs arise, and that the majority of the people I interact with tend to also have their own things going on, if not in completely different time zones. I’m beginning to think I need to consider scheduling the times I use this, and potentially looking at where downsizing or consolidating spaces is an option.

It’s a lot, isn’t it? And as I write it down, I can feel my mind dumping all of this and being like “dude, seriously, you’re making me hold on to way too much stuff.”

I think that’s why writing things like this is so therapeutic for me. It helps me unload all of my various thoughts, to organise them and help me to express and share my ideas.

And that’s where I naturally begin to drift off to – the main purpose of this digital minimalism at all. I’m doing this so that I can focus on doing something that makes me happy, and that’s to be authentic. And as I listened to the interview / podcast, I realised that my most purposeful and meaningful activities may not have been as unfathomable to me as previously thought.

The goal

Since becoming a mum, one thing has become really clear to me: if Gabriel asks me a question, I don’t want to bullshit him about what I think, or how I got to thinking it. I want him to know that his parents are human beings, not all-knowing deities. I want him to understand that in vulnerability or the act of not knowing, there is an innate kind of human superpower – the curiosity and ability to hunt knowledge. And not just find it… but ultimately apply it.

This concept, this belief and philosophy, fills me with such zeal for life. For parenting. For being there in the moment with each experience Gabriel has. And it has also made me realise that while I’ve known I wanted to write for the longest time, perhaps my mode for writing was never to become the best fiction writer out there… but maybe my work, my best work, and the best value I can add to anyone’s life is to realise and explore the questions people ask. And maybe, just maybe, I have the tools to help put the thoughts and discoveries into words other people can understand.

You’re A MOM and Streaming? GT#O

13th March 2022

Yes. Yes, I know. It’s ok, you can stop the standing ovation. No, really, I’m just an ordinary fellow Pixel, just like you.

It’s true – it’s finally happening. I’m coming back to streaming, and it’s going to be full-force “you’re with me or you’re not” style.

Gabriel, our miracle baby, is now a toddler in the “Terrible Twos” stage – which, by the way, isn’t so terrible! Maybe I’m doing something wrong? – and that means I’m finally in a position where I can leave the kiddo to entertain himself while I do some cool stuff, too!

Of course, for people who might be wondering how this is possible – the age old: how can one be a good parent AND stream with a toddler in the house?! – allow me to bullet point my life for you, so that you can skim read over the rim of your still steaming cup of java.

We Cleaned Up

Baby proofing a house, it turns out, is not only necessary for keeping the kid alive, but also for your own sanity.

When shit hits the fan – though thankfully not literally – having a clean and organised home means you can get to the stuff you need pretty quickly. It saves time, but more importantly, it helps you to keep your cool and keep going through the day feeling relatively unscathed.

That’s what I’ve been doing over the last 2 years: little by little, cleaning up, putting things where they belong, where they make sense, and where they avoid serious injury to our child, and us when we’re walking around in the dark trying not to wake him up.

Every safe room in the house has a “Gabriel Space” in it.

It’s taken a fair amount of decluttering, but eventually we got there. I believe our home is here for everyone to use and that includes our toddler son. So every social space in the house has a spot for him to sit and play comfortably, that’s just his. It’s not hidden away, or closed off so that he’s “safe but not seen or heard”, it’s a nice space where he can invite us in to sit with him and read a book, or make believe with his toys.

This was important to me, as I feel Gabriel’s personality is very self-assertive and self-assured, but also in some ways he’s quite introverted, too. So I could see that he would benefit from having his own space while also having the ability to choose where he wanted to play.

We live in a two bedroom split level home, so Gabriel has his own play den in the lounge, his own cot-bed in our shared bedroom with his own bookshelf of assorted stories and toys, and he has his own lounging zone in the study where Aidan and I work at our computers.

It’s lovely hearing Gabriel running around and playing between the rooms. It really does fill me with joy knowing he’s making his own choices about where he wants to play and is feeing safe and comfortable and content. To me, that’s a parenting-win.

I’ve Waited Until He… Until I Was Ready

Kids need us. It’s crazy but they really do need us. We spend most of our adult lives wishing someone loved us unconditionally, thought we were the most beautiful person on the planet, needed us, craved our presence 24/7 and laughed when we make goofy jokes. And then one day we have a kid who does just that, and suddenly they’re deemed too clingy and needy…

Naw, not for this momma. Since Gabriel arrived, it’s been a bit of a struggle because of my post-natal depression, but I can absolutely confirm that I’ve loved every second of being with my son, and if anything my challenge has been to figure out how to be okay with not being with him.

It was an emotional rollercoaster for me to figure out how to go for a 30 second pee, once upon a time. But then just this week I told Gabriel “mummy is going to take a shower, darling,” and I took a 15 minute shower… without rushing.  It was enough to bring a tear to my soapy eye… and that’s because it was a sign that not only was he totally cool with mummy stepping away for a bit… but I finally gave myself permission to be okay with it, too.

As Gabriel’s comprehension and expressiveness has been developing, it’s becoming easier for me to recognise and genuinely appreciate that he’s ready to not have me around constantly. So it’s time for me to admit that I can actually do something for myself now, which is kinda scary…

I am doing this for myself.

Streaming is such a great medium riddled with ethical and social challenges. Aidan and I frequently discuss(ed) why we stream, and after the arrival of our son, our mission was galvanised by a level of meaningfulness that we couldn’t comprehend prior to becoming parents.

As a pair, I know Aidan and I enjoy being involved in the creative process, and I also know that we are passionate about the luxury of gaming culture afforded to us.

However, when I sacrificed streaming to focus on Gabriel and my own mental wellbeing, I realised over time that my relationship with streaming was troublesome.

I wanted to do it because it was what my life was life before I became a mum, and yet doing it didn’t make me feel better. So I had to really consciously decide why I wanted to do it at all.

There is a lot of pressure on mothers, and I think a lot of it is internalised into a “I should do this” narrative. Women who don’t succumb to this are blessed, but I was pulled in without even realising it.

Streaming and coming back to it was one of those things I felt I should have been able to do sooner, but it was only when I quit trying around the 1 year mark that I really gained perspective on my relationship with streaming and I realised I didn’t have to stream. But I did want to.

Realising I wanted to, meant I was willing to wait a bit longer, because I wasn’t letting anyone down. That was important.

Streaming now is a way for me to socialise again. It’s also a way for me to show Gabriel that there’s another facet to me.

I’m going to show Gabriel that his mum is cool. 

Impressing a toddler isn’t difficult, so it’s not really about that so much as I don’t plan on streaming with Gabriel tucked away from sight. So the plan has been to stream with Gabriel fully part of the stream.

The new overlay I’ve asked Aidan to work on – that we might see this side of 2023 – will include our ability to see Gabriel as he plays around the house (upstairs), and if he chooses to join us in stream, then we will respond and react accordingly. The goal is to a) make it obvious I’m paying attention to my son while I’m streaming, and b) give you guys an insight into what life as a streaming mother is like, and maybe let others realise that you know what, being a mom is not some kind of ambition killing, personality destroying, social suicide.

Gabriel is 100% a part of my life, and streaming will fit in around Gabriel, not the other way around. And that’s what I mean about being cool – I want Gabriel to feel like when his mummy is streaming, he’s not being ignored, and he has the freedom to play alone or with us. And I’ll be making the appropriate preparations for this.

Thanks for reading guys, and I’m looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.

Chorna x

—

BUT WAIT, there’s more!

And here’s the fun part – a preview of the overlay do-over I’ve asked Aidan for: 

Remember that this was done in MS Paint, and there are some notes I’ve given Aidan:

– Pixel Chat = the stream chat

– Pixel Cam #1 = my webcam

– Pixel Cam #2 = will be either Gabriel’s cot-cam or my web browser showing my reference buildings for Sims, or Trello etc

– Grey Box = I’ll be using this to tell people what I’m streaming about today, e.g. “Building Gabby’s 3rd home”

– Thought Bubble = looking a bit better positioned, this is going to be where I will put in my latest “wellbeing quote”

– Latest Tip = donation

– Sub Goal = XX of XX count

– Latest Sub = subscriber

– The blue circle next to Pixel Cam #1 = discord icon showing who’s speaking

– Colourful boxes under Pixel Cam#1 = social media logos