Daily Journal – Day 536: First chocolate in a month and digital minimalism

Woke up really early but got enough sleep. Going to bed that early really works for me even though a bedtime of 8.30 seems a bit excessive for an adult.

Wrote morning pages, read the usual things, started writing. Forgot to meditate again. This new morning routine needs a little work, still.

Breakfast was had and I finished the crochet blanket (and neglected to take a picture, bad blogger), the boy came and went and my husband showed up.

In between I was reading „Digital Minimalism“ some more and between my breakfast and that of my husband I had suddenly decided to do what Cal Newport calls a digital declutter and what I think of as a digital sabbath.

So I will mostly stay off screens in March. This will be really interesting, and exciting, and scary.

I made rules, even, and wrote them down in my notebook:

1. No Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or Ravelry.
2. Checking e-mail and my account balance is only allowed once a day around lunchtime.
3. I can check Instagram, Ravelry and Twitter once a week on Mondays to see if there is anything that needs replying to like podcast feedback.
4. Video games are allowed unless I start bingeing.
5. Netflix is allowed unless I start bingeing. (Pretty unlikely at the moment.)
6. No blogs.
7. Spotify is allowed.
8. I can look up things on Wikipedia unless I go from topic to topic to topic.
9. I can look up things in the online dictionary.
10. I can look up maps and train schedules and how to get somewhere.
11. Podcasts are allowed.
12. No Youtube.
13. I am allowed to go online to work on the book cover design course.
14. I can still use Ravelry to find patterns and I can use KnitCompanion on my iPad.
15. I can attend the two Facebook live sessions with Orna Ross in March. I’ll treat those as if I were attending a lecture.
16. I can still order things online. No endless browsing, though.

Instead of all the things I usually do that involve screens I will focus on:

1. Books! All the reading!
2. More mindfulness.
3. Read magazine instead of online articles. (I happen to have a huge pile of unread spinning magazines lying around.)
4. Knitting, spinning, sewing, weaving, crocheting.
5. Listen to music.
6. Play music.
7. Drawing. Maybe.

I am really looking forward to this and, as I said, I’m also scared. And I can already tell that I will miss the groups on Ravelry that I’m active on. But I’m also sure that this will do me good. And after the thirty days I can come back and mindfully add social media back.

After those heavy decisions I cleaned and then went for a forty-minute walk aka cross-training:

I think this is a typo if not I have no idea what it means (‚costum‘ is not a German word as well):

Then I helped my husband make pizza and salad:

Then I enjoyed my first pieces of chocolate since the end of January, yum, taught all the students, watched the tenth Star Trek movie with the boy and neglected to get the podcast ready for publication. So that might take some time today.

Today there will be – less screen time, running in the rain, publishing the podcast and probably not much more. Here’s to the first day of carnival break.