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bluelanderWe're about ten months into the year of the journal and so far it's off to a rocky start. I wanted to post at least once a week, and my track record has been less than stellar.
The main factor I attribute this to is an absolute glut of work at my job. When I did my 100 consecutive days of blog posting last year, it was a time when it was possible to get caught up on work and have the tiniest sliver of downtime in which to goof off, and writing on my phone was a good use of that time. I can't use my work computer for anything fun, because everything I do on it is monitored and recorded. Sitting at my desk using my phone is acceptable, because we live in a reality where everyone does it, and no one wants to be the one to not do it to enforce the rule. As long as I'm getting my work done, and not flagrantly using my phone all day, I'm in the clear.
At the time, reading and writing were the only things I really wanted to do on my phone. I don't use any big social media platforms, and my fediverse timeline is tightly curated, so doomscrolling is thankfully a habit I was able to break. It doesn't take me long to catch up with the posts I missed while I was asleep, and then I'm done with the fediverse for awhile. That gives me a lot of time for creative activities.
Unfortunately, I realized that I could download retroarch and be getting retro achievements on my phone. So now that it's been a time of year that we're somewhat caught up, I've been spending time I might've otherwise have used writing playing Mario's Picross. Which I've learned is one of the best games on the gameboy. It came out in 1995, it should have been to the gameboy pocket what tetris was to the original gameboy. Everyone and their grandma should've been playing Mario's Picross, your local news should've been running stories about picross fever taking over the country, Andrew Lloyd Webber should've covered the picross theme under the pseudonym Dr. Chip.
The good news is, there's a very limited subset of games I can tolerate playing on a phone. It's pretty much just picross and digital board games. Even RPGs aren't playable for long stretches, because I have to slide my thumb around a virtual D-pad to navigate the world, which feels extremely bad. Digital board games are the best, because they only require occasional screen taps. Picross obviously isn't as good as playing on an actual Gameboy or something with a controller, but it's tolerable; and also, I've tried to play native android picross games, and I find the emulated gameboy game easier to control. On android, the boxes in the 15x15 puzzles are too small to consistently fill the way I intend. Moving a cursor with a virtual D-pad sucks, but it's better than the alternative.
I already got all the achievements in Monopoly for the megadrive (which I actually owned as a kid) and Life+Payday+Yahtzee for the GBA, so once I'm done with Mario's Picross I'll probably be done with phone achievements. I might check out Mario's Super Picross on the super famicom, but if it just ends up being the same puzzles on a different platform I don't think it'll hold my interest. (I might be in trouble if anyone makes achievements for the Itadaki Street fan translations.)
Picross is good for playing in small chunks, 10 or so minutes at a time (which is good because that's usually the amount of time I have) but I want to start jotting thoughts in my notes app, because that's how I managed to keep my 100 day streak. I would have sporadic thoughts throughout the morning, the time of day my brain is working, and just keep a log running throughout the day. Then when I get home, I have enough brain left to do some light editing, formatting, title-thinking-of, and posting.
I moved the notes app back to my home screen. I use a custom home screen app called oLauncher, which limits the number of apps on the home screen to a maximum of 8. It's a text list rather than a grid of icons. If I need another app, I swipe up and can either select from a list, or start typing the name of the app. This is so my attention is drawn mostly to the things that are important and I want to do. I *can* use other apps, there's just a little more friction to prevent me from over-apping. My top 8 currently is: (no particular order)
An audiobook player
An ebook reader
An instant messenger
A fediverse client
A music player
The notes app
The bus pass app
Weather
I can also access clock settings by tapping the time, and bring up the calendar by tapping the date. I think that encompasses most of what I actually want to do on a phone. I don't have a web browser on my home screen because using the web on a phone is kind of a drag.
The app I replaced to make room for notes is newpipe, which is super useful, but I typically download the audio from YouTube videos in batches when I'm home and listen to them in the audiobook player when I'm at work, so it's fine behind the swipe-gate.
Anyway, now that notes is front and center, hopefully I'll remember to use it more. I have ADHD and tend to forget activities I enjoy are a thing.
Like writing in this journal! Hello! I'm back and this time I'm hopefully going to remember that writing is a thing I enjoy. Please look forward to more loosely-connected bursts of cognition loosely edited together into whatever this is
The main factor I attribute this to is an absolute glut of work at my job. When I did my 100 consecutive days of blog posting last year, it was a time when it was possible to get caught up on work and have the tiniest sliver of downtime in which to goof off, and writing on my phone was a good use of that time. I can't use my work computer for anything fun, because everything I do on it is monitored and recorded. Sitting at my desk using my phone is acceptable, because we live in a reality where everyone does it, and no one wants to be the one to not do it to enforce the rule. As long as I'm getting my work done, and not flagrantly using my phone all day, I'm in the clear.
At the time, reading and writing were the only things I really wanted to do on my phone. I don't use any big social media platforms, and my fediverse timeline is tightly curated, so doomscrolling is thankfully a habit I was able to break. It doesn't take me long to catch up with the posts I missed while I was asleep, and then I'm done with the fediverse for awhile. That gives me a lot of time for creative activities.
Unfortunately, I realized that I could download retroarch and be getting retro achievements on my phone. So now that it's been a time of year that we're somewhat caught up, I've been spending time I might've otherwise have used writing playing Mario's Picross. Which I've learned is one of the best games on the gameboy. It came out in 1995, it should have been to the gameboy pocket what tetris was to the original gameboy. Everyone and their grandma should've been playing Mario's Picross, your local news should've been running stories about picross fever taking over the country, Andrew Lloyd Webber should've covered the picross theme under the pseudonym Dr. Chip.
The good news is, there's a very limited subset of games I can tolerate playing on a phone. It's pretty much just picross and digital board games. Even RPGs aren't playable for long stretches, because I have to slide my thumb around a virtual D-pad to navigate the world, which feels extremely bad. Digital board games are the best, because they only require occasional screen taps. Picross obviously isn't as good as playing on an actual Gameboy or something with a controller, but it's tolerable; and also, I've tried to play native android picross games, and I find the emulated gameboy game easier to control. On android, the boxes in the 15x15 puzzles are too small to consistently fill the way I intend. Moving a cursor with a virtual D-pad sucks, but it's better than the alternative.
I already got all the achievements in Monopoly for the megadrive (which I actually owned as a kid) and Life+Payday+Yahtzee for the GBA, so once I'm done with Mario's Picross I'll probably be done with phone achievements. I might check out Mario's Super Picross on the super famicom, but if it just ends up being the same puzzles on a different platform I don't think it'll hold my interest. (I might be in trouble if anyone makes achievements for the Itadaki Street fan translations.)
Picross is good for playing in small chunks, 10 or so minutes at a time (which is good because that's usually the amount of time I have) but I want to start jotting thoughts in my notes app, because that's how I managed to keep my 100 day streak. I would have sporadic thoughts throughout the morning, the time of day my brain is working, and just keep a log running throughout the day. Then when I get home, I have enough brain left to do some light editing, formatting, title-thinking-of, and posting.
I moved the notes app back to my home screen. I use a custom home screen app called oLauncher, which limits the number of apps on the home screen to a maximum of 8. It's a text list rather than a grid of icons. If I need another app, I swipe up and can either select from a list, or start typing the name of the app. This is so my attention is drawn mostly to the things that are important and I want to do. I *can* use other apps, there's just a little more friction to prevent me from over-apping. My top 8 currently is: (no particular order)
An audiobook player
An ebook reader
An instant messenger
A fediverse client
A music player
The notes app
The bus pass app
Weather
I can also access clock settings by tapping the time, and bring up the calendar by tapping the date. I think that encompasses most of what I actually want to do on a phone. I don't have a web browser on my home screen because using the web on a phone is kind of a drag.
The app I replaced to make room for notes is newpipe, which is super useful, but I typically download the audio from YouTube videos in batches when I'm home and listen to them in the audiobook player when I'm at work, so it's fine behind the swipe-gate.
Anyway, now that notes is front and center, hopefully I'll remember to use it more. I have ADHD and tend to forget activities I enjoy are a thing.
Like writing in this journal! Hello! I'm back and this time I'm hopefully going to remember that writing is a thing I enjoy. Please look forward to more loosely-connected bursts of cognition loosely edited together into whatever this is
