Virtue Journal: A more encompassing reboot journal

First post of 2021.

In this thread I write about my journey on the elimination of all vice, from my Catholic perspective.

Edit 2021: The original title was "NoSurfTV&Music®: A more encompassing reboot journal". The rest of this first post is preserved as it was in november of 2019.

What I mean by Surf: web surfing, including all social networks (except forums like this one, with a specific function).

What I mean by TV: films, TV series/anime, documentaries, and video streamming services (YouTube, Netflix, Twitch, etc).

Music is self-explanatory. Hopefully you can imagine what I mean by NoSurfTV&Music.

I want to try this out. Do you know of anyone that also tried abstention from basically all modern media on these forums? Let me know so I can read about their experience.

I will log all the exceptions I make to this lifestyle during my day (as I'm an university student, sometimes I need to watch some videos to extract valuable information), none of this exceptions involve entertainment as the sole or main object of the consumption of the media (be it a video tutorial, documentary, interview, etc). It's all for educational/productive purposes and I'll detail that when in need.

Why do I do this? It's a very important experiment concerning the nature of my cognitive experience.

Day 0.

Edit: I added web surfing. Now this is the ultimate dopamine preserving lifestyle. I'll basically log all my web browsing of the day and publish it here to help me with this. I'll finally put my browsing history to good use.

 

Yeah, I'd think so because these things have been with us for almost as long as we have been able to breathe. We have a very low tolerance for boredom and solitude nowdays. I want a purer, more powerful mind. That may sound cringy, but it's the truth... a better mind would be able to create a better quality of life for yourself and the people around you. That's what I think.

I will be posting updates at the end of each day, ideally.

EDIT: your name is funny af, @FellatiousD

 

Cal Newport is great. You're invited to copy this journal idea and to tag me in it, I'd follow your progress. I think this is more important than doing NoFap alone.

So far this is my second day. Basically, 0% of my time have been invested in listening to a song or watching a random video. This is good.

But I've had problems with web surfing. Fortunately, it's not completely bad web surfing. This is what I've done: This morning I spent several hours reading a lot of articles about neuroplasticity (it was a very narrow search focused on this topic). In the middle of that, a thought popped up in my head, it was a new idea for my undergraduate thesis (wtf?!), I researched that for several hours more. Good investement for the long term as I like that idea a lot, and I think I'm going to use my "new-found" free time to pursue it... but I have dead-lines for this week and they're giving me a lot of pressure.

That's all, summary:

- I didn't touch TV or music.
- I did web surfing like crazy but about two important topics, I procrastinated.

My new goal for the rest of the week is to keep away from TV and music and to stop randomly surfing the web.

I have more cravings for music than for PMO.

EDIT: I added video streaming services to my list of what I consider as TV. Also specified social networks as web surfing. I deleted all my social media accounts long ago. I don't play video games anymore, and I don't plan on start playing then ever again. That's why I don't include them in this reboot, the stuff listed in this thread are my last vices (that I'm aware of) and I'm going to crush them slowly but unavoidably.

 

Update 2021:

Alright, I'm going to give this a chance again.

I'm going to make it simple. I'm going to plan my whole day, and report the results here.

 

June 26 (day 3). I start writting this post at 20h14 of day 3.

Today was not so bad except for when I took my smartphone and turned it on to inform myself about something important (I wanted to know if we were going to train today at the Dojang) but ended up on YouTube watching pop music videos with half-naked women in them.

I'll keep listening to music, but I'm going to make the following commitment: Only listen to music while writting forum posts at the end of the day and don't listen to shitty pop music, but listen to serious music that is good for the soul.

Some objectives of mine with regards to personal productivity:

1. Plan my whole day with precision.
2. Don't surf the web (related to 4.).
3. Reserve forum posts for the end of the day.
4. Use the internet with a specific purpose in mind (related to 2.)
5. Make everything into a cycle, do the same things everyday to build value out of them (create strong habits).

I see the cycle of my days like this:

The first part of the day (after I wake up and before lunch at 13h00):

1. Wake up.
2. Pray, read the bible, read spiritual books.
3. Work on my personal projects (reading, writting, programming, etc.).
4. Have lunch.

The second part of the day (after lunch, before I go to church or training 17h00):

1. Keep working on personal projects.
2. Go to church or TKD training.

The last part of the day (after church or training and before going to sleep at 21h30):

1. Make an examination of conscience for the day.
2. Make my daily posts on my forum journals.
3. Pray.
4. Do some reading.
5. Go to sleep.

More or less, I begin and end the day thinking about God. I spend most of my day working on productive personal projects until 17h00 when I either go to church or training. After that I make examination of conscience for the whole day and then pray and read a little before going to sleep. Thank you, God, for such a blessed day of activity for me, I need to make the most out of it with your help. I want to do this everyday, thank you for allowing me, God.

I don't have a job, and university is cancelled in my country until new notice. I have a few more months of "free" time to build some fine habits and create some good stuff if I get serious. With the help of God all this time is going to give fruits and won't be wasted, I'll pray to Him that my life be a virtuous one devoted to the highest things, not to myself, because I am nothing.

 

June 28 (day 5) at 20h00.

The vices I'm fighting at the moment are the following:

1. Eating food outside of lunch and dinner.
2. Surfing the web, using the internet for enterntainment.
3. Waking up and going to sleep too late.
4. Not praying enough, not going to church, and not giving reserved time and energy to God due to my own laziness.
5. PMO.

I'm dealing with all of them as my basic vices (I have other serious vices, obviously, but I feel that these are very fundamental and visible so I'll start with them). I took 5 individual pages and made calendars on them, one for each vice, in them I will mark the days when I give in to my vices. If I do PMO or eat food ouside of lunch and dinner on June 30, for example, then I will mark that day with a blue x in the respective calendars. This is my plan to do a follow-up process of how much I fail, maybe it will reveal that I'm getting worst at times but that helps too! I want an objective way to measure and observe my progress in abandoning my vices.

I will start tracking vices 1 to 4 starting on July 1. I have been tracking my PMO relapses with this method (but I also register the number of times I do PMO, not just the day) since september of 2020. I'm going to post my results of tracking my other vices with this method in this thread.

My plan is that after defeating these 5 vices (1. overeating, 2. internet addiction, 3. bad sleeping cycle, 4. not doing a basic prayer rule, 5. PMO addiction) I'm going to follow with other more subtle vices that I have.

 

June 29 (day 5).

1. I failed on the pop music thing and it costed me. I ended up watching an anime video with an erotic animation. I should have sticked to Rimsky-Korsakov and the byzantine chants... althought it was a small mistake I sure will suffer for it, but I'll surpass it with God's help.
2. I didn't plan my day today, but I did what I had to do: I read several posts of user @Mr Eko and wrote some notes. I'm going to write about his Catholic method to quit vices, and I'm going to try it out myself and set some specfic goals. It seems very promising .
3. Tomorrow I'll write about Mr Eko's approach and set things in order to start working on other serious personal projects on July 1.

I'm going to watch a film before going to bed today. Tomorrow I'll comment on how it goes, I'll probably apply Mr Eko's method to stop watching so much movies and enterntainment... one day at a time, one promise at a time (with his method, it involves promises to God).

About my vices:

1. Food: I still eat some food after dinner. Bad, very bad.
2. Praying: I'm trying to pray a Psalm every three hours at a minimum. Not very good, but I'll improve by God's grace and mercy. But I should do the special prayers at the start and end of the day, and I'm failing in that.
3. PMO: Good, but some triggers here and there that could be easily avoided... YouTube.
4. Web surfing: I've been only on NoFap and on YouTube listening to music (the mistake on the latter was listening to the wrong kind of music).
5. Waking up and going to sleep early: I'm an utter failure. I plan on using Eko's method on a lot of these things. It's my new hope.

Lately I've been listening music everyday (will stop once I get rid of some tasks I want to do on the internet):

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God bless you all.

 

June 31 (day 6) at 23h05.

Today I researched and wrote a post summarising a faith-based method for quitting PMO and other vices. I have not published it yet.

I'm sleeping late and this is the second day where I don't plan my day. After publishing my post on the faith-based method to quit vices I'm going to get back to trying to sleep early and planning my days. Until then I am going to keep posting here even if I don't do what I say, that way I'm always aware of my failings.

I thank God for another day free of PMO.

 

July 2 (day 8) at 03h20.

Thank you, @gman314. My new post on the faith-based method I'm going to use to beat PMO and other vices is here, check it out and take what's useful for you.

I'm going to change my rate of posting to once per week.

I hate my internet addiction and posting daily fuels it really bad. I can't sleep early if I'm posting at night.

So, wait for my new posts at the end of next week where I'm going to give a more general and informative report.

There's not so much to say after one day of struggle. But after one week? It gets more interesting.