When going through this self-reflection exercise it can get a little depressing. Especially when I am trying to be hypercritical and honest about my situation. It is overwhelming but also very necessary. If I want my life to improve I have to find out where and how to improve it. If the past million minutes is any indication things don’t just get better all on their own.
The next health metric I need to contemplate is my occupational health. This is a measure of how I fill my free time. What do I occupy myself with when I am not engaged in responsible adult living? How am I filling my days, and is my behavior healthy?
The good.
. . .
I write, but that is on a screen. I listen to music, but that is usually when I am doing chores or driving. I work on cars, but for now that is just maintenance and the occasional homey hookup.
Fuck.
Looks like being lazy is my hobby.
Unfortunately my screen time is only marginally better than the average. Just because I am not staring at a phone constantly does not mean I am not clacking away on my laptop. My career unfortunately puts me in front of a screen for 8 hours a day or more so that habit has bled into my free time as well.
Being a computer addict is an ouroboros of depression. After not being able to find a job I used the computer to ease the angst. Living in the digital realm all the time causes depression by design, so my treatment plan made the situation worse. Meanwhile it was necessary to be on the computer to find a job and manage certain aspects of life. What I was most in denial of was the reality that computers were killing me faster than cigarettes.
Sedentary is deadly.
I did break the cycle for a spell. I was doing yoga, had quit smoking, was eating clean, and had lost weight. Then I caught the flu and was wiped out for almost two weeks. It was bad. It also reset all of the progress I had made and before long I was back behind a screen for most of my day. Then I got a job where I needed to be on the screen and I haven’t really left it since.
I am making progress. I am trying to focus my computer usage toward productive things, and trying to limit what I consume. I am forcing myself to take longer and longer breaks, and eventually I will put a plan and a schedule together after this whole life assessment that will replace the digital hobby with something healthier.
I am not really in a position to take up a hobby so even though this seems like a dire need, I am going to have to shelve it for now. It does bleed into needing to assess my technological heath. In 2026 there is no escaping the existence of a digital life so I should be aware of how that is manifesting.
What does my digital life look like?
Well, first things first, every year around January I audit all my online accounts. I go through my email and make sure I am assessing all of the websites I am signed up for. I clear out my mailbox, unsubscribe from everything I don’t care about, and go through the security setting to make sure I have disabled as much tracking and other bullshit as possible.
I then go through each account and verify the personal information they have is minimal and accurate, disable any notifications I can. Then I change the password. I close any accounts I no longer want, and just generally make sure I am leaving the smallest footprint I can while keeping that footprint as manageable as possible.
Even with my luddite tendencies, I have 60 different online accounts, not including any I have specifically for work.
Fucking obnoxious.
Anyway, I failed to do this process this past January, so I probably should audit my accounts for this year. It isn’t an unreasonable lift, but it can get annoying. It is amazing to me how many sites I encounter that have terrible password protections or flat out make it annoying as fuck just to change a password. I try to take it in chunks and schedule 5 per day because it gets old in a hurry.
Aside from the nuts and bolts I try to look at the sites I am affiliated with and what I am getting out of them. For example, I have a Facebook account. I have like 5 friends, all family that requested the connection. I don’t communicate through the platform, I don’t surf the platform, and I don’t post to the platform. The only reason I have the account is to access Marketplace because it is basically a monopoly on localized buying and selling.
Craigslist is essential dead.
Both are situations where I would rather smack myself in the throat with a large piece of cactus than deal with people who post things for sale.
At the same time, how else am I going to get more Jeeps?
I have an X account even though I have deleted that bastard a few times already. Recently I thought I might want access to Grok so I rejoined, but that place is an absolute ring of hell not even Dante could imagine, and Grok isn’t any better than any of the other shite LLMs so it isn’t necessary.
Fuck X.
That is it for social media other than Substack, and I am finding the honeymoon waning there as well. I can’t figure out if the algorithm if funky or if everyone is being served the same kind of absolute shite, but it is getting old in a hurry. I can’t really tell who is a bot and who is a person a lot of the time, and I don’t trust the metrics at all. At first it seemed like there was engagement, but I found a way to root out the truth.
There isn’t.
Engagement farming is rampant, and no matter how much I try to use the tools to get the system to stop serving me garbage it seems to make no difference. I am just there to exercise my writing muscle and keep my eyes open for potential. Thus far not much has bubbled to the surface. My time investment to Substack will likely atrophy unless something interesting comes along.
I am not hopeful.
That’s pretty much it. I don’t use TikTok or Instagram. I am not even aware of anything else the kids might be into. I don’t do Pinterest. Wait, I do have a LinkedIn account, but that shit is laughable. I only used it to occasionally look for jobs and right now it just stores my resume. LinkedIn is pretty much a dumpster.
The bulk of my time suck is YouTube. I watch a lot of home renovations, car restorations, and artist doing art. I will delve into comedy podcasts and political things here and there, but I am mostly supporting artists and people bringing old buildings and cars back to life. I do find myself watching people repair old video games or restoring antique cheese graters too, but I am not sure they are on my subscribe list.
I disabled watch history so I am not being served rabbit holes. I still get suggestions, but I am trying to steer clear of the programming that keeps me locked on the site. I should probably audit my subscriptions, but sometimes that can be difficult. Project Binky releases like once every 6 months if I’m lucky, and Oversimplified hasn’t posted in a year.
I have to let certain channels breathe.
Still, I could get rid of some things that aren’t serving me. I think I need a break from the politics, and I think I have seen enough furniture makeovers to last a lifetime. There are a couple of car channels I can do without, so I am thinking I could get my list under 50. Even then that seems excessive. Maybe I should shoot for 40 and slowly pare down from there.
I don’t know though. I don’t think I will ever tire of Space Ice or Duncombe House Diaries. I have to see Escape to Rural France through to the end, and I am also too invested in the Jenna Phipps home project to let that one go. I think once those are complete I probably won’t have a reason to keep watching but you never know.
I could also find interesting content in the meantime which is the dangerous part. I really need to fill my days with real world stuff and only hit the computer when I absolutely have to. At the same time, I can’t live like a monk so I have to find a healthy balance.
Discipline.
Moderation.
All the things.
My one saving grace is I don’t play video games. There was a period there where I was dipping my toes back in, bit I realized that was a bad idea pretty quickly. I have enough bad habits.
Although I have heard that certain games are good for ye olde heimers.
NO!
Must do sit-ups first.
Stupid belly fat.