For my 18. Birthday I received a “Slow Watch” and though it’s expensive, I really like it. It embodies a different way of thinking about time and about living in general. I really like the way the present themselves on their website “slow is not a speed, it’s a mindset” because I saw myself every day, just rushing through my day, my week, my life in general. And I liked to claim that it’s only for now, and soon everything will be less stressful again, like it was… but when was it really? I always remembered times being less stressful before because they just seemed to become more and more stressful as I went on, and if I can’t break that spiral I will most likely end up rushing through even the most important times of my life.

I used to think and sometimes even say that I just want to get to the good parts, and skip the boring times in my life. That’s why I played smartphone games in every minute of my life that I was even remotely close to being bored. And I lived in fear that every day and every minute would just pass so quickly that I wouldn’t have enough time to enjoy it. At a doctors appointment I would get annoyed at every minute I had to spend in the waiting room because I could do so much more at home. Yet when I was at home I would spend every perceivable second glued to a screen and listening to some YouTuber talking. I used to get to school by train, I did that for 7 years straight, yet just until the very end of those 7 years when I finally got to move on, I never seemed to just look out of the window all the way and notice all of those minute details in every little thing. I was glued to a screen, and forgot the world around me. And yet I feared to waste any moment of it. It was hypocritical. It seems like I would give more meaning to those YouTube videos or other forms of entertainment than to anything else in my life. I would go to school just so I could enjoy some entertainment later, I would go to eat just to be entertained all the time during that.

I’ve begun a long journey, learning to appreciate the place I’m at while I’m there. I’m learning to appreciate the craftsmanship of the table that I’m writing this very blog post at. Learning to appreciate the people walking by my window, going about their day. Learning to appreciate my own mind, being bored and coming up with things. Instead of occupying it with pointless entertainment at any possible moment. That’s not to say that entertainment is bad or anything. But it was and sometimes even still is, everything that I strive for in my day. Everything that I work for, just to get to that part.

In this blog post I won’t get into much detail about how I went about that, that is left for another day. But I want to tell you, dear reader, where I am now. Right now, I am at a boarding school, which means for the first time I really notice the effects of not having a smartphone in this day and age. I can’t just quickly connect and look up something on the internet. Or check up on my online emails real quick, or even just check on my WhatsApp/Signal/Matrix messages (I combined everything into Matrix) because there is basically no available internet here, except for one room but it’d be a rather big hassle to go there and get set up there. And I haven’t found it necessary yet. I’ve been completely off the internet for almost a week at this point, and I haven’t missed it since. I am still “connected” when I want to, because I can take my Flipphone with me. And my watch doesn’t even allow me to get too stressed about the time, because I can only approximate what time it is, and it tells me all I want to know at a quick glance “Oh, almost 11 PM”. To be fair, I’m not yet accustomed to the watches' 24h face and single-hand design. But I’m learning quickly to read it. When I walk into my room alone, I don’t immediately run to my computer and boot it up, or to my Music Player and listen to some podcasts, not even urge to read a book. I just walk in, and do what I want to do. And if I have nothing in particular to do, I just lay down in my bed and I think. I think about anything and everything. Letting lose of these things has allowed me to think about all the things my mind bothers me with, I have more than enough time in the day to think about everything I want to think about. And I don’t have to urge to tell people about things that I just thought about, I just write them down in my little notebook and ask them about it when I see them next time.

I’m eager to learn more about this “new way” of living. I hope you enjoyed this blog post, and I hope you have a wonderful day.