An Epiphany on Shifting Towards Healthier Pastimes
I've been going through a shift recently, finding different, healthier sources of entertainment: reading, watching engaging TV shows, playing funny video games with friends, and playing cards with my partner to name a few. And with the warmer Spring weather, things like biking, disc golf, and ultimate Frisbee are more possible again.
It's been nice so far; I finished Mary Shelly's Frankenstein recently and LOVED it! And I've been making an effort to watch less attention-optimized media, like Jet Lag, New Girl, and the new Maul series. But there's still a gap in my menu of healthier pastimes: nearly all of them require intentional energy and active engagement.
This isn't strictly a bad thing, as I feel that the engagement demanded by these activities leads to healthier mind. However, it does leave an empty space towards the bottom of spectrum of required energy. And maybe the lower bound of energy requirements is unreasonably low due to the normalized, hyper-optimized media we are bombarded with every day, I don't know. Regardless though, because of this, the boredom in between more engaging pastimes has lead me to an epiphany of sorts: most of my previous forms of entertainment and relaxation were not actually all that relaxing or healthy.
Those less healthy activities are much easier to slip into and fill my time with. Scrolling requires the lowest effort by far, but provides almost no real "nutritional" value in return, and actually harming the user 99% of the time. Watching clickbait, mindless YouTube videos can be fun in moderation, but they are similarly easy to slip into and usually provide almost no "nutritional" value. Even more social activities like playing competitive first-person shooters with friends usually trigger frustration and adrenaline when dying or losing the game - in part due to the famously toxic environment in those communities.
I'm not sure how to fill that engagement gap yet. Sudoku is fun, as are daily puzzle games like Enclose Horse. I need more variety in that range though, especially for days where I feel burned out (which has been pretty often lately). If you have any ideas or thoughts - or you just relate and want to commiserate - my Mastodon handle and email are at the bottom of the page.
I don't necessarily have a point or a solution to wrap this up with. I just had this epiphany and needed to write it down somewhere before I forgot it. Hopefully someone else can relate too.