Discipline has been on my mind a lot the last few months. I’ve found I honestly lack it way more than I thought I ever did. I think that’s mostly because I’m fully out on my own now, I don’t have school or parents to force discipline into me and I’ve begun stagnating more than I realized. I’ve had a lot of time to think this last month and I’ve found discipline is the biggest thing that I need to work on. My relationship with discipline has come and gone, on one hand I was able to quit smoking cigarettes cold turkey, on the other I’m very very bad at brushing my teeth consistently and I always have been. I think it might just be easier to quit something than it is to start something, especially when I honestly feel like my schedule’s pretty full to begin with. I’ve been more and more cognizant of what fills my time, and what I doesn’t fill it enough. The biggest waste of my time is 100% on my phone. “But Dallas! Time spent enjoyed isn’t time wasted!” Agreed, but I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed my phone. Every time I catch myself on it, I legitimately ask myself “Do I even like this? Or am I just doing it?”. I’ve been paying attention to how I feel mentally and physically after scrolling on my phone for hours, and I noticed - It makes me FEEL BAD!

One of my favorite parts of growing up and being an adult is having the ability to feel just how bad things are sometimes. It sounds really silly, but as a teenager I could’ve woken up at 5pm, eaten 6 pounds of candy, drank a 12 pack of orange soda, and played video games for 15 hours to pass out at 8am the next day and somehow feel perfectly fine. Nowadays, I eat sour patch kids and my jaw tenses up after the 5th one! Now if I fall asleep past 10pm, I’m grumpy and tired the next day! If I don’t fit in 10k steps a day, I feel so restless and antsy. I really don’t know how or when, but it really feels like after I turned 23 a switch has suddenly been flipped and eating vegetables makes me feel really good. And not even veggies with ranch or cheese, just veggies by themselves. It’s great! I love feeling awful when doing unhealthy things because it’s just more of a deterrent to doing them. As a teen in the midst of my Gaming Sessions, the worst I would feel was some level of shame - but frankly, that was only because my parents would make fun of me lol.

I think the realization that doing bad things makes me feel bad (shocker) has been so instrumental to taking control of discipline in some ways. Obviously I still do things that make me feel bad, I’ll eat some ice cream knowing I’m going to have a real bad time later, or I’ll leave the dishes sitting out for tomorrow me to take care of. But it feels different now, I think you could argue this isn’t real discipline that I’ve cultivated myself through sheer force of will, but instead of being forced to be disciplined by school and parents I’m now being disciplined by my aging old man body and the fear of homelessness. And I’d agree, to an extent, but frankly the consequences are much more dire now. And now I understand them better. As a kid it was never enough that my mom would be mad at me for not doing an assignment, it never really worked for me. But now, seeing my bank account dip below the threshold I feel comfortable at, or that sticky feeling on my teeth after eating sweets, that’s enough. That’s more than enough. It makes me stop and question every impulsive decision, do I really need to buy this? Do I really need to eat this?

I took Latin for 6 years in high school*, and I remember translating this one section I will never forget. I don’t fully even remember the context, but I believe it was a speech from Cicero. The Romans weren’t too dissimilar to us nowadays, they still had skilled wordsmiths yelling at each other. The only difference is we call it a rap beef and they called it oration. Oh, and both opponents were probably sleeping with minors. Anyway, Cicero was mad at someone or some group and that’s what we were translating. He said something like “You are like sheep, the way you are slaves to your own bellies”. That section had me tripped up for awhile, partially because Latin is hard, and partially because 16 year old me just couldn’t get it. How is that a bad thing? Aren’t we all slaves to our own basic needs? If that’s how you define slavery, then yeah, sure man, whatever. But I was just never able to forget it. I knew it was about gluttony and lust in a way, about being so unable to control yourself that you can never say no, but I didn’t get it on a further level beyond that. It really is true that some things just start making more sense when you’re older. I think everyone’s been a slave to their own belly before, everyone’s eaten, gotten drunk, jacked off, or doom scrolled simply because they’re bored - and sometimes you do that all at once!.. Just me..?

But part of me separating myself from my phone is attempting to be more mindful of when I do the things I do and why I do them. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with scrolling through the timeline for 10 minutes while taking a shit. But I’ve been asking myself a lot, why do I need to watch a YouTube video when I’m eating? Why do I need to listen to a podcast and music and play a video game at the same time? Why do I play solitaire while actively getting dressed in the morning? I don’t know why I do any of this! And it makes me so angry! But the idea of not getting on my phone for my lunch break fills me with such anxiety, let alone getting through a whole work shift! I might not literally be a slave to my belly, but I am a slave to something. I hate it. I’ve discovered I feel my happiest when my phone’s screen time is low. The lower the better. I’m not sure why even, when my phone’s screen time is low my laptop’s is definitely high, but there’s a wholly different experience when on my laptop. For one, I’m far limited on where I can take it than I am with my phone. There isn’t 8,000 notifications all competing for my attention to try and get me to stay on their app for as long as humanly possible. I feel far more in control on my laptop. Plus, that’s where a good amount of my creative expression goes down. I’d rather die than type all of this on my phone! I’m at 1,260 words and counting! I ain’t typing that on my phone.

I feel like I should end this off with some call to action, or goal for myself relating to my screen time. I’ve tried setting hard goals for myself before, but I’ve never felt them work super well. If I make a goal of only using my phone for 3 hours a day, then I’m fucked if I have to do some driving in an unfamiliar place. There’s some amount of convenience you have to say no to if you’re limiting how you use your phone. And the conveniences I cannot say no to are GPS, music streaming, and being able to get in contact with friends and family quickly. At least, those are the conveniences I use most often, I don’t think I have a toxic relationship with the calculator app or Google Calendar. Despite for how long I’ve talked about disliking my phone, I really couldn’t hop onto the dumb phone train. There’s too much here that I love, and iPods with wired headphones just do not work well with me, and no way am I walking around with a camera in my pocket. I don’t know just where to leave this off. Other than to share what’s been on my mind lately, and to maybe persuade you into being a little more mindful of why/when/where/why/how you do.. whatever you do. And to not be afraid of boredom.

Anyway, here’s a photo of Cupcake, for all your Cupcake needs.

Image of a tabby cat laying down in a ball. Her face expressess annoyance at being woken up, but her paws are tucked in neatly and politely.

*6 years because we were on a block schedule, with 4 classes per semester. Each class was about an hour and a half long, so we were able to squeeze an entire year’s worth of lessons in a semester. So, technically I did 6 years worth of content in 3.