I have been finding Neocities a breath of fresh air after being on social media for so long. You can look around here for hours and find so many interesting things and people, it feels a lot more genuine than on Instagram and Facebook.
It's so fun finding new and interesting sites and I always learn something or find something really interesting that I want to make note of to go back to and research. It's engaging my brain in a completely different way to social media and I love it so much! I'm so glad I decided to try my hand at coding and make my own site, as bare bones as it is at the moment.
It's getting me to think on a deeper level than anything on social media has in years and even in only two weeks of being on here has introduced my to so many new things and concepts that I don't think I ever would have thought to look up in the past.
For example, just yesterday I found someone's blog talking about how they handle having depression and the steps they took to get themselves out of a hole, and I just found it really interesting to read about someone's personal experience with something and I definately learned some new things that I would like to try and start doing from what I had read. It feels a lot more real and human than anything you can read with a google search. It's good to read about real people going through real things. It feels so much less isolating over here.
Every day on Neocities I wake up and I feel excited to discover new things, new concepts, new media, new ideas, something I haven't ever felt on a social media platform other than YouTube.
On a completely different note:
I have been struggling lately with feeling 'unproductive' and not working hard enough despite spending 10+ hours a day working hard instead of having fun. My brain is just constantly in this mode where it's chanting "You need to work harder, you need to work harder." over and over. When I'm eating, when I'm going for a walk, when I'm in the shower, any time I get a moment to think, this thought just loops around in my head. It's becoming really bad for me but it's so difficult to get rid of it. It's almost like a song stuck in my head.
I'm continually stuck in that though loop. I have been trying some things to help though, I started using a pomodoro timer with my work to make sure that I am staying on task for longer. Often I struggle to stay focused on a project once it becomes difficult, and having the timer next to me that says I only have 10 mins left helps me refocus and try to work out that hard thing as much as I can in those 10 minutes. It's been really nice. It also helps me schedule breaks. After four pomodoro sessions I will give myself a bigger half-hour or hour break where I can do whatever I want; like cook, clean, watch something, read etc.
I feel using this method has been helping me get things done faster too, becuase I am being timed, I feel like I need to do less 'procrastinatory' actions within my work. For example, when I am editing something, when I don't know what to do next I will just play the edit back over and over and over again. With this method I feel less inclined to do that because I know I only have 25 minutes to get this thing done before I can get a break.
It's been very helpful to me in keeping a bit of a balance in my days. The thoughts of needing to work harder aren't going away though which sucks.