Early days

Day in and day out, I would have that blue light blinding my eyes. Huge eye bags, a dry throat, and a fat headache – all these just to enable phone addiction.

But just how did I get here? “Maybe it was bound to happen,” at least I told myself. I had the devices, the time, and no motivation to start living; this was the perfect scenario for my laziness, degeneracy, and my downfall. YouTube was the ideal place to numb myself, to see others fulfilling my dreams, driving their cars, and living in their houses. I had become a consumer, an attention junkie. From the rumours, trends, gossip, banter, and brain rot, I was a seasoned veteran, a black belt.

When I look back at it, it’s because I had nothing going on, and the power of the personalised ads and recommendation videos was just too powerful for me. Soon after this addiction spread throughout, social media had put me in a chokehold. And my phone couldn’t take it, neither could my mind nor my body, and so I had to quit and regain lost time.

My wakening

And so the cleansing began. I must say, in the beginning, it was hard. The first step was to get back to work, and so I had to blow off the dust from the shelf, this meant refining my camera skills and getting back to videography. Secondly, I had to change the ways in which I would wake up and sleep. I decided to wake up to a book and sleep to a book, basically replacing my phone with more and even more reading time and devotion. And lastly, I knew this way of living wasn’t living, and so I promised myself to be better, not perfect, just better. Of course, there were other honourable mentions like sleeping schedules, learning a new skill, or even locking my device away, but due to the human attention span being equivalent to that of a goldfish, I will keep this short.

I deleted instagram for a week. Here's what happened

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Freedom

I can now say, with a smug look on my face, that I am no longer the same blue screen junky I once was. I found a purpose, let go of the numbing, and started living again, and if I could, you can too.