I've noticed an anti-pattern in my day-to-day work where I'll spend an inordinate amount of it on social media (Mastodon, Discord, IRC, Matrix, etc.). I've also fond myself checking email a lot more this past month. Part of this is a lack of energy, but part of this is also because social media and other distractions are an easy way to while-away the time.

This isn't sustainable for what I want to create.

I mentioned early-on in my "retirement" posts that I didn't want to become an angry man on the internet. I knew that habit was waiting in the wings. Well, I'm noticing those patterns creeping into my daily routines.

So I'm going to try what I'm referring to as a "semi-social" challenge starting on May 1st and running throughout the month. What this means is that I'll only check social media at 10:00, 14:00, and 20:00. (10am, 2pm, and 8pm for those who aren't hip to 24 hour time). That gives me 6 hours between those check-ins. I'm also going to prefer using tools like tootstream and tut for checking in. This might also include Discord and Matrix check-ins, though those tend to be less frequent.

That just leaves email. I do my RSS through email (using rss2email) so that might get checked more frequently. That said, checking mail more than once an hour is probably overkill for me (especially nowadays where most of my mail is logfiles from my servers). Will need to tweak this.

What I will do instead is read or program or play a solo rpg / journaling game. I have plenty of these to work on / play with, so whenever the urge strikes I'll choose those instead. Also, if I have a hot little idea then it can either be a blog post or I can create a "next action" for it and just wait until 10:00, 14:00, or 20:00.

That leaves the question of what to do should I fail. I think the most delicious irony would be to create a new Twitter account and pay for the "blue checkmark of shame". I don't want to do this in the slightest (I have Twitter blocked at the router-level) so I have an incentive to keep myself in check for this month (pun not intended).

I'll report my progress as I go along. Wish me luck!