No YouTube Day 4

    Hello. It is with great joy that I announce this comeback. In 2020, I tried not watching any YouTube videos for a couple of weeks and it was a weird and yet important experience. Many of the things I did at the time I now look back fondly because I was genuinely trying to change my life. I remember feeling empty and like I could grow in ways I didn't understand. There was panic and anxiety, but also a will to live. I remember baking bread and cooking more, I remember walking around the neighborhood and waking up super-early. It was a lovely time, and it was only possible because I was away from YouTube and got my brain and soul back.

    As a bit of an explation over why I did that in the past, and why I'm doing it again, I will paint a picture. I was the fourth kid in the house, and while my parents were married and living with me, they still did not take care of me that well or that often. As a kid, I had a nanny I had a really special connection with (for the longest time, I thought she was my actual biological mom) and she didn't like when I made a mess, so naturally, I was put in front of a TV.

    After a while, that evolved into watching TV as a coping mechanism for my anxiety. When I didn't want to do homework, I would go to the TV. When I had friendship problems, I'd go to the TV, when I didn't want to fight with dad, I went to the TV. It became a sort of soothing ritual.

    Now, I don't remember what I was doing on the internet in 2020. I believe this happened around the time I was avoiding all internet. I only had a gmail account, and I told my friends to contact me via email (it was a whole thing). Coming from a third world country, being this weird was definitely not the norm, and avoiding WhatsApp was social suicide, but I wanted to try something new and it ended up paying off beautifully, so why the hell not?

    I remember the intense feeling of boredom and the hunger I had for sensory input making me try new things and talk more to others. I tried avoiding my family, but I still had many goals I wanted to achieve and avoiding YouTube was the first step.

    Now, I find myself in a similar situation: I have many goals, and for the second time in my life, I want to see how I'll act without a screen showing me what to think.

    What is different this time?

    This time, I'm medicated for anxiety, I have more friends, more freedom to try new things and go to new places. As well as hypothyroidism medication. I also have more responsabilities and wilder, greater goals, so I think that this time, I can actually make a difference in my life. Also, now I'm more experienced with that sort of goal. I don't have Instagram, Facebook or Twitter. I deleted bluesky and I only have one social media: Substack.

    A year ago, I deleted TikTok. It was a great decision. Like Lorde once said, I felt my brain deteriorate on that app.

    Leaving that app was a great decision, but for a while I still had to fight off YouTube shorts and finally the time has arrived to delete YouTube as a whole. 

    Yesterday, my friend asked me if I wasn't bored and honestly, I don't think I am as of now. The only feelings arising are anxiety -- since I don't have my coping mechanism anymore, I have to deal with it -- however, since I'm medicated (and the hypothyroidism medication somehow helped me more than the SSRI), I'm more capable of dealing with the stresses of life, and of finding reading to be enough of a distraction. But this isn't the second time I've tried to take screens away from my life. I actually tried for the first time when I was 10-years-old.

    I was very addicted to TV, I had just gotten my first ever phone, and I was not doing well at school. My parents could not give less of a fuck about my homework or my grades, so I had to lock in. And I spent a couple of weeks not watching any TV and only using my phone for texting. It was genuinely the first time in my life I wanted to change, and I look back at that time with rose-colered glasses even though I was in the trenches.

    Now, I have other goals. I want to go to med school and to do such a feat, I have to lock in again. Hopefully, I can keep the ball rolling in my first semester as well (I'll have to study more than I ever have). I also have the goal of making as much money as possible this year so I can comfortably pay for my friend's utilities and food (before you accuse her of using me, her story is sadder than Oliver Twist's and she's hard working as fuck, she just needs a little hand).

    The stakes have never been higher. And this is just day 4.