The title can be a bit confusing, and it my not be a direct question here, but the question is based on myself being in a place in my life where everything moves very fast, I have lots of things to do, and little time enjoying things that earlier would define my life. I have recently started on a journey trying to make my spare time more “slow”, to be more in the moment at actually enjoy doing the small things.
Examples of this can be that I have made my smartphone very dumb, by removing all the apps that makes you doom scroll. This was not hard as I lost interest in Instagram, facebook and other apps about 3 years ago. I just felt like I was “too old” for these kinds of apps and the time they steal from you (I am “only” 33 now).
I have also sold my SteamDeck, and instead bought a old-ish computer running windows 7 and a CRT monitor that I keep in my apartment. I use this to play older games that I know I enjoy, as well as trying out the games I never played as a kid (I only played sports games, but found out I really love everything from Elder Scrolls to Ghost recon and so on). In this way I find it more enjoying to sit down on a Friday night, after me and my girlfriend have eaten the usual Friday dinner and watched some crap movie (because that’s default in our lives these days. Watching stuff on streaming and scrolling at the same time) and have a beer by my side playing something or exploring some content online. ON A CRT MONITOR. I know I sound like a tool trying very hard for nostalgia, but I cant’ feel anything other than that its working.
I am also considering other things to “dumb” down my life for the sake of getting some kind of “peace” with the things I do. For example buying physical news papers to have a “quiet” moment reading, instead of sitting on my phone doing four things at the same time.
Has anyone else felt this way about not being in the moment when doing things?
I’m a little older than you and years ago I took similar steps. Getting rid of “distractions” for me did help but it left with me emptiness as scrolling or whatever had become second nature. I moved to the slow Internet, gopher, Gemini, much later lemmy but in my case the distractions gave shape to my problem not the problem was my distractibility.
Being in the moment for me took practice and the cultivation of calm. As cliche the e as it sounds meditation helped me find what calm felt like and that allowed me to cultivate it. I had stopped doing social media in my late 20s, stopped going to bars everyday and then moved across the country.
The reset of moving allowed me to attempt all new habits but I had not yet changed enough to appreciate what I had. I would have probably gotten the same benefit just being open to change where I was. Wherever you go, there you are is legit. Video games, alcohol, cocaine, social media or whatever were not keeping me from happiness. I was using them to replace the work of finding contentment.
I was a poor craftsman and I blamed my tools. I probably set my “personal development” (whatever that is supposed to mean) back years by making drastic changes to my circumstances and still being miffed I wasn’t “fulfilled.”
I can’t say that any of that is applicable to you but I tried a lot of things and the “problem” if it can be called that was between the keyboard and chair for me. I should have started by asking myself what do I want and then Iinterrogating that answer until it confessed.