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I can't help but wonder how my life would be different if mindlessly staring at screens wasn't an option (lemm.ee)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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YouTube is my vice. I spend hours and hours and hours there watching videos every single day. I've recently however starting to resent the fact that apparently I seem to prefer watching other people do stuff rather than do that myself. Watching interesting videos feels like a leisure but doing interesting stuff has somehow in my mind turned into work.

Just few days ago I watched a Casey Neistat studio tour and I caught myself thinking how nice it would be to have a neatly organized space like that for making stuff. Well I have a space like that! I'm just never there because instead I'm in the house watching YouTube. I hate that. When I was younger I took apart solar lanterns to build a solar battery charger, I made a camera gimball stabilizer out of threaded rod, angle irons and plumbing pipe, I build a functioning submarine out of legos. Now I can't even remember when I last time build something just for fun.

While watching youtube is "fun" aswell however it's not memorable. I still remember my lego submarine from 20 years ago but I don't remember a single video I watched yesterday. I'm worried that if I keep doing this I'm basically just throwing my life away. There's always going to be another video to watch. I will never finish that project.

I guess I'm just venting. I'm sure there are people that can relate however. How do you guys deal with this?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Early gen x.

As a kid with just 3 channels on TV, I did a ton of imaginative play, crafted things, drew, converted my room into a space ship occasionally, rode my bike around the neighborhood, played with my dog, built couch forts, and myriad other stuff, and yes, watched tv. I don't remember being bored often.

I have a dozen hobbies I could devote time to if I could somehow retire today. Of course the depression gets in the way of wanting to do anything. But when I'm not, I am pretty sure I could find something to fill my days with every day for decades. My reading queue just keeps growing. I used to read so much once...

Maybe I'm being overly optimistic and I would just be bored half the day? Then again I took 5 days off over the holidays and played a new video game basically all day every day lol. It was glorious. And I felt so good to not have to deal with work. I started to feel good and motivated instead of bummed. I got the distinct feeling I would continue to have a great time if I could've just kept not working from that last day of vacation forward.

My MIL takes classes online, goes to seminars, travels, goes to theater, ballet, etc. She quilts. Reads a lot. She does watch TV a fair bit but doesn't do web stuff all the time. She doesn't ever seem bored to me.

One of my friends does art, all different media from acrylic painting to glass fusing to sandblasting to sculpture etc. On top of that, gardening, writing, prolific reading... He isn't capable of being bored. Hardly ever watches TV. Takes forever to get back to text messages lol.

I think it is easy to get sucked into blowing time on apps and socials and all that. As a sort of sad substitute for doing more fulfilling things. That's probably a trap I've fallen hard into. It's sort of like eating chips instead of making you self dinner. Yeah it is calories but what joy is there in it, really?