Wasted Time Happens ☹️

 Wasted time happens.  I guess I am particularly susceptible to this thanks to my cell phone.  I sat down in my chair tonight and then did nothing but look at dumb stuff on my phone and I wasted a lot of time.  There was some Charlie Sheen documentary on television that I had no interest in watching.  I wasn’t even reading or looking at anything particularly interesting or worthwhile on my phone.  I was just looking at time wasting stuff.  This is always a dumb choice when I could be spending my time doing something much better like reading a good book.  I don’t know how to stop myself from falling into this dumb trap. 😟 I don’t miss having a Facebook account one bit.  I should get rid of my Instagram account also.  That will be one less place where I will end up wasting a lot of my time.  Once I go there to look at one thing, I end up being compelled to watch video after video and look at people’s account images.  I guess I’m just too curious to not be sucked into this even though it is really not a productive use of my time or how I would actually like to spend my time.  And of course the algorithms reinforce the pull on our attention by showing us the exact content that we are most likely to want see and watch based on what we choose to click on and watch.  Maybe I will be out of touch with the 21st-century if I have no social media accounts, but I’m sure I will survive.  I don’t think I will completely escape or be totally out of the loop of the 21st century regardless.  I don’t think this is possible. 

Update:  I have also deleted the Smart News app from my phone.  It was pretty stupid and annoying.  Every day I would receive dozens of notifications on my phone about stories on the app.  Only once in a great while though would the links attached to those notifications actually lead to the stories in the notifications.  Almost always, the links would just lead to the app and a list of other news stories, and the one from the link would not even be shown.  There would of course be a whole list of other similar stories and different stories that I would be interested in that would entice me to want to open them.  I opened the app, though to see the story from the notification, which was nowhere insight.  So kiss my butt Smart News.  You suck and your notifications suck.  I don’t need that so I have deleted the app.  I think I can live quite fine without your news.  God knows there is still enough content everywhere online.  I have not fallen out of connection with 21st-century without Smart News.