(Stuff like this is why people have thought I am dumb/flakey/crazy/putting it on for my entire life. No. No, that is just My Brain. Even when I had an office job for nearly two years, I would amuse/annoy coworkers by saying "See you tomorrow" every Friday at five. Every Friday. I would get lost in the town I grew up in. Frequently. I can get lost in the neighbourhood I have lived in for the past twelve years. ((Less frequently, but this is because I developed agoraphobia and now rarely go outside.)) My mother is the exact same way. I personally think it's the girly "inattentive" flavour of ADD where you can get completely lost in your own head daydreaming out the window and often cannot focus or process for shit. Because again, my mother has been the same way her entire life. Except then later after puberty I got a heaping helping of Oppositional Defiant FUCK YOU, but anyway.)
(ANYWAY.)
Staying off Tumblr -- yes! (This was the big one.)
Staying off Twitter -- yes! This is less of a Thing because I dislike Twitter intensely, altho I'm sad because all my friends are either there or on Facebook (which I don't do either). sigh. (Twitter really is just like having ADD. It's distracted by the least little thing, it has no memory, there's no focus and it frequently explodes.)
Reading more -- yes!
Rereading less -- yes! (I love rereading. But if left to my own devices I'll do nothing else, v typically. sigh.)
Blogging more about books -- yes!
Getting up and walking around apartment more instead of sitting for hours -- no, not really. This is No Good. (There's been a heatwave, so I haven't really been exercising at all, also No Good.)
Exercising more -- see above.
More offline activities -- see above. I have been eating a good dinner with T nearly every night, and watching shows and documentaries with him, which is nice (I dunno how "offline" this is since we're streaming from Netflix or Youtube usually). Being able to snuggle up on the couch and bingewatch shows is pretty damn cool, I can see why it's so popular. I don't have basic cable so I don't get trapped in the CNN news cycle or watching endless shitty reruns anymore. It's been that way for about....eight years now? and really feels pretty good.
(Altho "cocooning" loses some of its appeal when it happens because you're agoraphobic, let me tell you.) ("No, no, spending all day in the bathroom with a blanket and a pillow and a bowl of cherries and five books is not a good idea. No, no, making a little nest in the bedroom closet with a blanket and a pillow and a bowl of cherries and five books is not a good idea, either. Making a little nest on the couch?....okay." Mental health means treating yourself like the world's crankiest toddler: patience, calm, much repetition, refusal to take the tantrums seriously, constant distraction. "No, you don't want to die! Look at these envelope poems by Emily Dickinson. Aren't those neat? If you were dead, you wouldn't be able to see them." "BUT I'M GOING TO DIE AND THEN I'LL BE DEAD AND I'LL BE NOTHING AND I WON'T EVEN KNOW -- " "But that is later. You can look at them now." "BUT EMILY IS DEAD TOO AND AND -- " "But you can look at her now! See?" Dealing with a cranky toddler might be less exhausting, because you would occasionally get a break when they fucking slept.)
I do feel like I am slowly reclaiming my brain from the Tumblr emphasis on visuals and nothing but, and the cutesy stunted baby-speak ("feels," "totes," "p rn," could you talk like a fucking adult, please) and one reason why I got disenchanted with Twitter early on was I could feel myself thinking in shorter and shorter bits that would fit more easily into 140 characters. That was kind of horrifying. (Many people would probably argue that I could do with a lot more brevity, but well, how can we put this delicately, fuck you.) (See above about that Oppositional Defiance thing.)
So even though I have not been writing five thousand words every night and cleaning my house madly and reading The Man Without Qualities in the original and running a marathon, I have made some progress! This is not bad! Go me.
