Shortly after starting my year off, I implemented a routine where I would work on my project to research and write a book about happiness at work. I spent a few hours every day reading, taking notes, and writing my thoughts here, on this blog. And when I wasn’t doing this, I was instead taking Spanish lessons online or volunteering.
However, I recently fell of the wagon. This is why.
Trips and sickness
Travelling was not part of the plan initially, but as a result of learning Spanish I did become interested in visiting Latin America. My wife and I booked a trip to Costa Rica, and we travelled there in June. Just two weeks later, I also traveled to Canada to attend a funeral.
However, just a few days in-between my two trips, I caught Covid. In retrospect, I’m glad I got it when did. It was the best time to get it because I was healthy for both of my trips, but it prevented me from getting back into a routine after my first trip and I soon had to leave again after regaining my health.
Getting back on track
As I write this, I have spent about 40 days out of my routine. I put my Spanish lessons on the back burner. I hardly volunteered. I haven’t done any research about happiness at work recently. On the flip side a friend of mine needed a video editor and I volunteered for fun. I did a little bit of photography. I spent a bit of time learning Haskell, a programming language.
So, I did a bit of this and that, but I’m having a bit of trouble focusing and getting back into a good routine for a few reasons.
First, I’m usually slow to get something started. I’ll spend days or weeks playing with an idea in my head before pulling the trigger and committing to it. For example, it took me months to decide to take a year off. Okay, fine, this is a big decision that requires a lot of thought, so here’s another example. I bought a pizza oven recently and I’ve been playing with the idea for at least a year! I’ve also had this idea of building an outdoor kitchen for years now and have yet to kick off that project.
In addition to being slow to kick things off, I’m also haunted by my many interests. I’d love to spend time of all of them, but I can’t. It’s also quite difficult to choose which interest to dedicate myself to, causing me a bit of paralysis.
But worse of all, I’ve let the YouTube algorithm dig its claws into me again.
The YouTube sinkhole
I do not know how I got here, how I got addicted to YouTube. This isn’t something that happened recently, but over a long period of time. How did YouTube become such a time sink for me and when did it cross the line into addiction? I’m not sure, but at some point, it became easier for me to just watch another video rather than reading a book, working on hobbies, or even playing video games! YouTube is a monster that is sucking up all my free time. I’m literally wasting my time on the platform.
This was a problem before I took a year off. It was just like watching TV after work to relax. But it became my routine and it’s really hard to shake off. And can I point out the irony in Googling how to kick my YouTube addiction and getting top results that point me to more YouTube videos about it? This is something I need to resolve to help me get back into a good routine.
Conclusion?
There’s no real point to this blog post except to post an update on my journey and the little bump I’ve just hit. Writing this post is the first step to getting back on track and I’m glad I took it. Let’s get back into the game!