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Introductions. I'm sure that you're familiar with them. Someone new has just started at the office and the boss suggests that everybody go around give a brief summary of themselves. "Tell us your name, what your role is here at the company, and something interesting about yourself."
I used to hate doing these. What is there to say?
Recently however, I've found a great way to introduce myself. It goes something like this:
"Hi, I'm Nolan! I'm probably the most boring person you'll ever meet because it's easier to describe me by the things that I don't do, rather than the things I do."
Then I pick one of the following truthful abstentions and expand upon it a little.
If you'll humour me for just a minute, I'd love to share some of these exercises in self restraint that I've tried to pick up over my life. Most of them fit into just a four main categories.
This means that I do not:
This means that I do not:
This means that I do not:
This means that I do not:
That's a great question, and a very natural followup that I get after I make my personal introduction to someone. There are two main reasons, first: I recognize that each of the above activities have a cost associated with them, which I have decided is not worth the benefit that they provide. Second, living with discipline helps me to better serve as a witness of Jesus Christ. This follows from one of my favourite Scripture verses:
Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to [love God's family] more and more, and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. - 1 Thessalonians 4:10-12
That being said, I put no trust in the so-called "righteousness" that I gain by making these sacrifices. There is nothing wrong with partaking in these activities (excessive gambling and drinking aside). I'm also not trying to preach to you and say that YOU should adopt these practices as well. This page is about me and my idiosyncrasies; it's not a prescription for anyone else. Now let me be more specific, and discuss these on an abstention by abstention basis:
Of all of my idiosyncrasies, this is perhaps the most difficult one for people to swallow. It's also really hard to talk about. Writing this piece has been quite a humbling experience, since I had to put into coherent words my relationship with YouTube and what my life was like before when I was using it.
Let me give you the whole story, then I'll address some common objections that I get about YouTube.
For many years of my life, I spent gargantuan amounts of time watching YouTube. At any given point during the day, if it was possible for me to watch YouTube, I would. For example, I would watch YouTube while:
Essentially, YouTube was the first thing that I opened when I woke up and the last thing that I closed before I went to bed. If I wasn't sleeping or actively working, I was watching YouTube.
Over time, I generated some degree of cognitive dissidence towards YouTube. I would often have desires to accomplish things, but I found that I never actually got around to doing them because the only thing that I ever did was watch YouTube. And it wasn't even that I was really enjoying what I was consuming. I promise you that no matter how much good content there is on YouTube, there is infinitely more vapid, useless, boring, and mind numbing material on there. You'll quickly find that you'll burn through all of the good stuff and will be left scrolling through mounds of trash.
At some point, I decided that YouTube was taking up too much of my time and I wanted to cut back. I started by making rules for myself about how much YouTube I could watch and when I could watch it. "Not while I'm eating, and not too late in the evening", or "'Only' two hours a day." I flip flopped several times with different self-imposed rules, but I always inevitably fell back into heavy YouTube usage. I was completely stuck in my habit and there was no series of mental gymnastic tricks that I could use to fish myself out.
Skip ahead to the middle of 2021; I was once again using YouTube with no self-imposed restrictions and was no better off than I had ever been before. It was around that time that I was reading in Matthew, in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount about how to deal with temptation: "If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell." [Matthew 5:29-30] In light of that advice, I decided to treat my relationship with YouTube for what it was: an addiction that I needed to cut out of my life entirely.
What does that mean? It means that I blocked YouTube on my phone, and on all of my computers. I forbade and prohibited myself from visiting it whatsoever. This was a drastic step, as at the time I felt as though going cold turkey was simply an impossibility. In an effort to increase my chances of success, I opened up Twitch to myself to help me "get off" YouTube. I found Twitch to be much less interesting than YouTube, but it worked to fill the long, silent void left by YouTube's departure. I started watching some different Twitch streamers, but I did what I could to only watch live streams (as opposed to prerecorded stream replays) as those where less like the edited, curated, and addicting YouTube videos that I was used to.
In those initial weeks, my YouTube consumption tendencies were strong. My default "NPC idle animation" was to plop down at my desk, open a browser, and type: "y<Enter>" which would autocomplete to "youtube.com" and take me to my curated homepage. I realized that this behaviour was as effortless as grabbing food out of the fridge when I was hungry: it took absolutely no thought, and was done before I realized that I was even doing it.
After two weeks or so, I found myself reflexively trying to navigate to YouTube less and less and Twitch was helping to fill the enormous gap. However, I knew that fully replacing YouTube with Twitch was no real improvement. Thankfully, for whatever reason, I found Twitch to be far less addicting. So, after a couple of months, I cut Twitch off as well, in the same way as I did YouTube: all at once. In place of that, I found one particular self-hosted video site that contained videos that were created by one guy. The key is that it was a very finite supply of video content. Once I had seen them all, that was it. Needless to say, I've watched most of his videos many many times, but they didn't have the same grab as YouTube once did.
I have just recently cut that limited video source out of my life as well. I am now finally and totally free of my video consumption addiction!
The journey that I have made was not perfectly clean; there were times that I fell back into YouTube for a day or two, and then quickly put the blockers back up when I realized that I had fallen off the rails. I now, however, consider myself to be stable. I don't reflexively open up YouTube, and I have much more control over what and when I watch. However, I don't think I can ever go back to watching YouTube, even in some limited capacity. I see myself like a recovering alcoholic. I'm no longer in the bar every night, or drinking myself silly at home, but if I even touch a drink with friends, I'll find myself right back where I started so fast it'll make my head spin. That's fine. There's so much to do and accomplish in life beyond watching YouTube. My freedom is definitely worth the cost.
Nope, you heard right! No YouTube. None. At all. I'm not just trying to socially signal, or exaggerate my behaviour. I seriously watch NO YOUTUBE.
As far as I'm concerned, YouTube Music is the same thing as YouTube, and as such, I don't use it at all. I talk more about my relationship to streaming services for music and the like below.
That's true! There is a lot of great content on YouTube. Plenty of videos that are genuinely funny, informative, well constructed, and/or entertaining. The reason I quit YouTube is not because there wasn't any good content there. I quit because it was taking up far too much of my time, and served as a ball and chain around my neck. As shocking as it may seem, not knowing about and not seeing the cream of the video crop is a sacrifice that is worth making for me because I am no longer a slave to YouTube and it's endless droning in my mind all day long. I won't see the latest and greatest video, but I also will have the freedom to choose how I spend my time.
Great question. I wish I could. The psychological manipulation that Google has implemented into the YouTube algorithm is so strong that I have never been able to successfully resist it. That sounds like an admission of weakness, but I think that that realization and its externalization into my behaviour is actually just an admission of my limitations. There are certain things in life that I simply cannot handle, so I have to go without.
Not at all, in fact, if anything, I like it far too much. I like it so much that watching it is my default behaviour.
__sigh__ Sure; you can send me the link, but I won't watch it. I'll lie and tell you I watched it, since you clearly don't understand my position and trying to explain it again will do nothing but cause further tension in our relationship. If you drag me over to your screen, I will very reluctantly watch it with you, but I will be suffering the entire time, not laughing, or learning, or being entertained. You are compelling me to partake in an indulgence that I know will cause me harm. I'll spend the entire time doing my best not to pay too much attention to it and not to get too engrossed in it. If you value our relationship, PLEASE don't try to force me to watch YouTube. I know that it is hard to understand my position. Know that I'm not just saying that I quit YouTube to get attention, or brownie points, or to socially signal my moral superiority. I don't consider myself morally superior to you at all (especially after writing this particularly embarrassing piece). I genuinely do not watch YouTube. It is genuinely better for me not to watch it at all, in any capacity.
Social media is riddled with problems, to the degree that the discussion of said problems is common place in our culture. In particular, social media is:
This list is far too significant for me to overlook and as a consequence, I've stayed away from most social media over the course of my life. However, I do have a few vestigial social media accounts from which I am in the process of fully separating myself. Specifically, I have:
As for every other social media platform out there, I've either never made an account, or I've already deleted my account.
To be clear, I do own a cell phone - it's a used (2014) iPhone 6 Plus that I bought back in April 2018 from a third party reseller. What I mean is that I don't use apps on my phone.
Most people install an extensive array of apps on their phone. After all, there's an app for everything! From banking, to mobile gaming, to news consumption, to company loyalty programs, to social media. To see everything that they have installed, they often have to scroll through page after page of apps.
I, on the other hand, have stripped down my iPhone to the bare minimum number of apps that I can get away with. In fact, there are only 9 apps on my phone that were not put there by Apple. Don't worry! It can still make and receive calls and text messages, that is what mobile phones were initially designed to do after all!
Because there is effectively nothing to do on my phone, it's not a constant distraction. In fact, I often just leave it at home. I don't need to bring it with me! It's such a freeing feeling!
Video games used to be a huge time sink for me. Along with watching YouTube, they were the only other thing that I spent my time doing. My console of choice was my computer, so I spent a lot of time on games released through Steam. Like with YouTube, I built up a sense of cognitive dissidence towards video games. I would play them when I had a bit more energy, and would try to frame the experience in my mind as an accomplishment. I was building something, or practicing something, or learning something. But I came to realize that everything that I was building, practicing, and learning was limited in practical application to the games themselves, making the whole endeavor meaningless.
After university, I drifted away from playing video games and toward doing more productive things with my spare time. In fact, I went 15 months without playing any games at all. Unlike my relationship with YouTube, I haven't fully decided if I am going to permanently and irrevocably cut video games out of my life or not. The reason for that is that they play an important role in bonding with some of my friends, especially those that live far away. However, I have cut back by more than 99% of my past levels of play.
As a self-humbling exercise, here's a list of the top 10 games (of my total 116 games purchased through Steam) by total play time:
That's 6,245 hours in just 10 games. If you add up all of the hours I've amassed in the other 106 Steam games, the total comes to 7,171 hours. This does not factor in any time that I've spent in Minecraft, which is considerable, but also unmeasurable. My best estimate would put it at at least 4,500 hours. Bringing our grand total to 11,671 hours. That's more than 486 consecutive days of nothing but video games. That's 4/3 of a year, completely lost.
I cannot even fathom how much better off my life would be if I had invested, even a portion of that time into something productive. At the end of my life, I will have to stand before my Creator and give an account of how I spent my life. Thank God for his grace, for I have no excuse for this colossal waste.
Extra! Extra! Read all about it! I ignore the news!
As human beings, our curiosity drives us to want to know about what is going on around us. For most people, this means hooking themselves into their favourite news outlet. But regardless of the means of ingestion (news app, newspaper, podcast, etc), I find the news to be toxic to me mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and financially.
Despite the clever guise that the news is here to inform, it is not. Most news outlets are privately held institutions. They have an obligation to their shareholders to turn a profit. Unfortunately, presenting the news is only partially correlated with profit. In order to be as profitable as possible, the news needs to encourage people to sign up, give up their personal information, and spend a considerable amount of time absorbing their content everyday so that ads can be repetitively and unsurreptitiously stuffed into their eyeballs.
Like almost every other company competing in the digital sphere, news companies capture attention by toying with human psychology. They do this by twisting their articles to evoke strong emotions, like fear and anger. These emotions cripple human cognition by compelling people to gather more information, either to fuel their rage or to assuage their fear. This is optimal for the news companies, because it maximizes their opportunity to advertise.
The news never closes a big, breaking story. Even a story which could be comfortably summarized in a handful of sentences is drawn out through the chronicling of many near identical witnesses testimonies, the exhortations of pompous "experts", and the regurgitation of the public's reaction through the recitation of trending tweets and opinion pieces. This turns a small tale into an epic. In this way people are compelled to stay tuned indefinitely in the hopes that they'll hear some new, miniscule piece of information.
Unbiased news is incredibly hard to come by. Some institutions claim to strive for this highest of Cronkitic standards, but ask the man on the street, and he'll tell you that MSNBC is a liberal outlet, Fox News is a conservative outlet, and Buzzfeed is not a news outlet at all. Thus, most news companies have siloed audiences - those that subscribe to the bias presented by their organization of choice. Furthermore, the discussion within these ideological ecosystems is more focused on insulting those on the other side than actually clarifying the details of the day's current events.
In summary, I don't pay attention to the news because:
I don't want to feel afraid or enraged all of the time.
Being someone who works in the advertising industry on the technology that is used, I can speak directly to this one. Since day one, it has always amazed me how much money advertising brings in for those who practice it. You may think that ads don't work on you, but that's what everyone thinks and far too many people are wrong. I don't want to ads and their content taking up residence in the most sacred space I have: my mind.
The longer a news network can get you to stay on their site, the more money they make. This has an unbelievable opportunity cost for you as a news consumer. The 24-hour news cycle will never willingly let you pursue your hobbies and interests. The best way to break free from their death grip is abruptly and entirely.
Far too often, the stories that come up on the news are ones that will only be of interest to a very small, niche group of people. For lack of a better phrase: Who cares!?
If you are truly curious about what is happening in the world, the news is perhaps the worst way to learn about it. Unbiased informative content is not what they are motivated to deliver.
The news discusses large, vague stories that are disconnected from your daily reality. As such, they have no impact on how you live your life. If you really want to know what's going on in a realm that's relevant to you, go talk to the people you care about: your family, friends, and co-workers.
For these reasons, I do not watch the news on TV, I do not read the newspaper, I do not listen to the news on the radio, I do not read news or news adjacent websites, and I do not listen to news related podcasts.
Do you remember what the breaking news was a month ago? You might be able to recall one, maybe two headlines. Do you remember the details of the articles? If you are like most people, you probably can't. If the news was so incredibly important, don't you think that you'd remember the details longer than a few days? My philosophy is that if a news item is still relevant a month after its initial publication, it might be important.
Now for the greatest part of my news-ignoring system: unless you live in an Amish colony, the people around you are talking about the news. This makes other people like a filter for your news intake. You only get the most important news, and you get it in a few condensed sentences! Trust me, nothing important will pass you by. If push comes to shove, the government will plaster pamphlets on every door, wall, and lamppost to get your attention. You can't escape knowing about the most important news if you try!
Absolutely! I just don't believe that the news is actually interested in informing me.
I disagree with the entire premise. There is no need to fill each and every waking instant with noise. Peace and quiet is a wonderful thing to be savoured, not squandered. When I do want to work to some background noise, music is always a far better option.
I don't own a television because I have no need for one. I don't have a cable/satellite subscription and I don't use television/movie streaming services (see below). I don't watch sports (see below), and I don't watch YouTube (see above).
A standard television subscription may be a bit antiquated, but it fits right in with video games, social media, streaming services, and online video: it can very easily create a dependency. I've seen it in myself. I've never paid for a television package, but when I've been in places where television is freely and openly accessible, I find it very engrossing. It is easy to spend an entire day doing nothing but watching it. I don't want to be mastered by something addictive like that.
“I have the right to do anything,” you say — but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything" — but I will not be mastered by anything. - 1 Corinthians 6:12
Sports seem to be the modern tribal game that humans play. We arbitrarily choose sides, then demonize those who arbitrarily chose differently from us. If our team loses, we flip out and vandalize our cities. We get so invested in the minutiae of the sport that we form extremely strong opinions about things that we have no control over, like which player should be drafted by which team and how much they should get paid.
All of this just seems to me to be a toxic combination for body, mind, and soul. I have no desire to participate in that madness, so I don't watch sports.
I've always disliked movie theatres. I still vividly remember my first experience. My parents took me to see (2003) "Piglet's Big Movie". I was five at the time. I recall going into the theatre and hearing lots of other young children talking with their parents. We went and sat near the back of the theatre. It was strange how the whole room sloped downward towards the screen. It felt almost like if you leaned forward, you might fall down to the front of the room. Then, the movie started.
First the lights went out. It was dark, very dark. But after a moment the screen lit up. It was bright, almost blindingly bright. There was a very sharp contrast between the screen and the other areas of the room. And the sound. It was loud, almost deafening. I was having none of it. I was told that this was going to be a fun experience, but this wasn't fun, it was an absolute assault on the senses. We didn't stay very long; five or ten minutes into the movie we left.
Now I have been to the movie theatre several times since then, I've seen probably a dozen or so movies in the theatre in my life. The last one that I went to go see was (2015) "Star Wars The Force Awakens". I was disappointed by the experience.
In general, I find movie theatres to be an all engrossing environment. While you are watching a movie in them, it's almost as if you are really sharing the experience with the characters in the movie. I loathe the feeling of reacclimatization that you get when you get out of a movie that you were really engrossed in. Walking feels all weird, your head kinda spins, and everything feels strangely quiet and far away, almost zoomed out. You have to decondition yourself from the setting and characters of the movie. Ick. Gross. I much prefer staying grounded in reality.
I'm not saying that I'll never ever go to a movie in a theatre again, but I mean, the last one was in 2015. It's 2023 as I write this. At this rate it doesn't look like I have that many more movies in me before I cast off this mortal coil.
The Bible is quite clear that drunkenness is sinful and as such I do not support the decision to get drunk.
The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. - Galatians 5:19-21
I also believe that the Bible is quite clear that being "stoned" or "high" is equally unacceptable, though not mentioned as explicitly as drunkenness, it is not compatible with the sober-minded state that Christians are called to be in.
Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. - 1 Peter 1:13 (ESV)
To be clear, I subscribe to an abstentionist point of view when it comes to the moderate consumption of mind altering substances like alcohol. That is to say: I take absolutely no offense if others choose to consume alcohol, even if it is right in front of me. But as for myself, I will not consume any alcohol. Even if I'm at a party with others who are partaking.
The same goes for marijuana. That said, I probably won't stick around if you start smoking. Not as an act of condemnation, but as a consequence of the fact that it is very difficult to be in the same room as one who is smoking without also being subject to second hand fumes.
Why? I have seen the damage that alcohol and marijuana have done in the lives of family members and friends. These substances have caused an unbelievable amount of pain and suffering, such that if they were entities capable of standing trial, they would certainly be sentenced to death. Alcohol and marijuana have broken up families, separated parents from their children both emotionally and physically; they have polluted impressionable young minds and been the driving force behind much disease both physical and mental. I cannot in good conscience condone such substances.
On the other hand, I cannot seem to derive a comparable list of benefits from their consumption. The best that I have ever come up with is that consumption in group settings strengthens the relationships between people. While this may be true, there are plenty of other, less ethically ambiguous ways develop a sense of camraderie with others that I'd much rather partake in.
As such, I don't drink or smoke at all, in any amount, ever.
Store bought frozen foods tend to have much higher levels of Sodium in them than their fresh equivalents. As such, I avoid them. That said, I'm not against freezing homemade food. In fact, I love to make large batches of food and freeze them for those days when I'm too tired to cook properly. Then I can pull out some homemade frozen goodies for a quick meal! Healthy and convenient!
These drinks are full of sugar/aspartame, which isn't healthy. I've never gotten into the habit of drinking them, so I never crave them. As far as I can tell, there's no downside to avoidance. On occasion (maybe once a year) I'll have a glass if I'm out with friends, but that's it.
This is the one abstention that I am most likely to change at some point in the future.
At the moment, I live in an apartment in the downtown core of my city. I'm close to a vast cycle track network, and as such, I ride my bike everywhere I need to go. Given the cost to own your own car - the purchase of a vehicle, insurance, gas, oil, regular maintenance, parking, and licensing - I feel no desire to own one. I do have a driver's license, so when I need a car, I rent one. It costs far less and is still very convenient. When I move out of the core, I'm sure that one of the first purchases that I'll make is a car.
I have a very unusual belief about travel. One which I have never explicitly gotten agreement on from anybody else.
You can get 90% of the value of going on a trip for 0% of the effort of going on said trip.
That's not to say that I universally refuse to travel, just that I'm very choosy about when and if I travel. Let me explain:
Many people are self-described world travelers. They love the idea of going to new places, seeing new things, meeting new people, eating new food, and basking in new cultures. Accordingly, they have a long list of places that they'd love to go to.
To me, others often overlook the true cost of going a such a trip. Perhaps the subjective costs are smaller to them than they are to me, but I cannot overcome the burdens imposed by travel. In particular, when travelling, you have to:
Why do all of those things when you can experience 90% of the trip online through writings, photos, and videos? Seeing the Eiffel Tower in person requires a lot of work! Seeing what it looks like, or watching someone walk around it is trivially simple on the internet. Sure, it's not exactly the same as seeing it in person, but experiencing it virtually is certainly enough to get 90% of the real experience!
I haven't even remotely convinced you have I? That's fine, that was never the goal. Have fun on your next trip; I'll enjoy my routine and stay-cation!
To be clear, I have a credit card. I got the most basic one I could get my hands on; the "features" are simple. It's got: a CAD $1,000 limit, no annual fee, and it slowly gathers some form of "points" based on my usage. But I rarely use it. In fact, if I have any other option at all, I won't use it. Here's why:
The money that I spend on my credit card is not my money. At the instant of transaction, no money is transferred out of my account, only a liability is added. I'm spending someone else's money. Now I'm quite well aware that if I pay off my card right away it's as though I were spending my own money, but at the end of the day, it's an extra step.
I know that this is just some psychological silliness, but there is a pain incurred in transaction. When I pay for something, say in cash, I feel the loss of the cash. It's visible and evident. My wallet gets thinner, and the bills that I hand over disappear, never to be seen again. When I pay with a card, I get the card back. It's almost like I didn't lose anything at all. This is dangerous because it makes the transaction painless. It makes it easier for me to continue spending. It's also harder to quickly measure the amount that I've spent.
Every purchase that is made is tracked. Who I purchased from, when I purchased, how much I spent, and (in some cases) what I purchased is all kept on record with the credit card company. That data is then, in turn, sold to advertisers, governments, and others. No thanks.
Sure, credit cards give "great" deals when they get used. Most of them come with "cash back", or travel insurance, or any number of other benefits. I think of it this way: credit card companies are not charities. They do not give out these rewards because they just want to be nice. They do it to exploit you into spending more and more on your card (that's how you get more and more points). Those prizes aren't cheap. I may pay my credit card bill on time each month, but there are plenty of people who don't. And it's on their foolishness, bad luck, desperation, or poverty that these rewards come from. No thanks. I have no interest in blood money.
Oh how I pine for the days before the ubiquity of credit cards! But those days are long gone.
The Bible has some excellent advice for handling money. For example:
The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender. - Proverbs 22:7
This is why I don't fancy the idea of borrowing any money. It's not a matter of salvation, or is even necessarily sinful, but it would make me a slave to the person who lent me the money. As the old rhyme goes:
I owe, I owe, so off to work I go!
I'd rather live with less stuff than be a slave; after all, life is about more than the stuff you own:
Then [Jesus] said to them, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions." - Luke 12:15
Additionally, it is difficult to be generous with others when I am financially strapped myself. Living on less than I make gives me the resources necessary to bless others. And at any rate, it's not like all the money I have is "mine" in the first place. God entrusted it to me, and expects me to use it wisely and be generous with it.