u/blue-mp

Hi. I'm BMP (27).

When I was a kid, I was pretty active, I loved reading and spent days doing it, I liked playing around, climbing trees and was curious about how the world worked. I grew a little and did well in school, even winning an award for my academic performance once.

We already had a computer in my house, but I only played games like Pinball, Solitaire or messed around creating images on Paint, but then, there was this one summer that my parents gave me more access to the Internet...

Like the curious kiddo I was, I started exploring and soon discovered some pretty cool games, got into new music, learned how to see shows online, and everything was new, exciting and fun. Time passed and I started spending more and more time online and it was fun for a good while, but I soon discovered that the Internet had a negative side as well... I also slowly realized that my academic performance dropped a lot, cause I didn't have the discipline to sit and study with the deep focus I had before.

Even without studying like I should, I finished school and managed to get into college and get a degree in a "respectable" field, but, even then, my habits have remained similar.

Nowadays, I feel like surfing the web feels more tiring than fun, social media is full of ads and brainrot videos, and everything seems to be made either to sell you something or grab your attention so that you spend your whole day scrolling mindlessly.

I had some free time these days and all that I seemed to have enough energy to do was scroll... I know that I have personal and professional projects to work on (plenty even), but the phone/PC just seemed to be pulling me in into some apathetic trance of addiction.

Today I decided I want to quit. I installed LeechBlock NG on my browser (on my phone and my PC), and blocked the sites that I use the most for a big chunk of the day (leaving just a brief period for me to use them every day).

I woke up and just existed... like without my phone... I was so used to being on my phone at every single free moment of my day that the time just seemed to stretch, it was kinda crazy. I called my both my parents today and had a chat with them, watered plants, organized stuff at home, had lunch without simultaneously watching videos (just enjoyed my food - crazy right?). It was calming (and many of you may even think that it was boring), but it felt real.

I felt present at the moment and that felt good.

I want to keep doing it, and this sub seems full of people searching for this same thing: presence (and a community to share it with). So, yeah. I'll do my very best to keep up being present every day from now, and, if you guys want to join me, you can comment what you did on your days as well.

Thanks for reading until now. Peace.