It's wet and windy outside, and has been for a few days now. Lovely weather for getting groceries by bike.
The other day I watched a heron land on the roof of my neighbor's shed. Herons are quite common here in the Netherlands, though as an immigrant from a less heron-dense country I'm still excited whenever I see one. This one hung around for a few minutes, watched some crows and doves flutter between my neighbor's patios, then took off rather awkwardly, just barely clearing the row of townhouses across from our balcony.
It's been a couple of weeks since I uninstalled all social media apps from my phone, and so far this attempt has been going better than my previous tries. I was inspired by this video from the channel Digging the Greats about "Dumb-ify"ing your phone. Like the creator of the video, I'd grown tired of having a device in my pocket that was constantly vying for my attention in increasingly sophisticated ways.
I think it's tough to overstate the extent to which smartphone apps, especially social media, have successfully monopolized our attention in the last few years. Like, if you're not actively engaged in a task that requires your full attention, it's almost strange to not be scrolling through your infinite feed of choice. When's the last time you rode a bus, or waited for a kettle to boil, or pooped, without scrolling on your phone? It's hard to believe that there was ever anything else to do during these little breaks.
You know how smokers will sometimes switch to chewing gum if they're trying to quit? The funny thing about kicking a scrolling addiction is that you still scroll. Your brain still seeks out the easy dopamine hit of opening up twitter / insta / reddit / whatever and being spoonfed whatever content the algorithm has determined will capture your attention for the longest time. If you delete all those apps, you'll suddenly get the urge to open up your photo reel and start scrolling, or open up google maps and just... look around? The other day I caught myself scrolling through my settings looking for something stimulating. Hopefully someday I won't feel the need to open up my phone whenever I get bored, and I'll have kicked the addiction for good.
It still feels strange to not idly scroll while making toast. But it's worth it if I get to see more herons.