The first real winter in 2 years, what a relief! It's times like this when I'm convinced I'm a northern person. Chop-some-wood-and-make-some-tea person. -20°C makes me excited, and +30°C makes me want to peel off my skin and die. It's a pity that the weather will change in a week or two.

Today I woke up to an absolute dead silence. Maybe it was caused by this abnormal weather, but there were completely no sounds of people, birds, or cars - anything. The loud silence, like on the top of a mountain, when you feel this internal urge to be as silent as everything else to dissolve with it completely. The last few days, I slept so well I couldn't remember the last time I felt this way. But in the middle of the week, I had a few nights of insomnia, so maybe it's just the contrast. Probably it was the acclimatization period caused by my transition to a "less screen time" lifestyle, which I described in the previous post. This weeknote is mainly going to be about things I experienced in my first week.

The main idea is to reduce computer time to 6 hours a day.

First of all, I'm happy to announce that I haven't screwed up yet. Maybe it's because of novelty and I'm just excited to do something in a different way, but I feel pretty confident. I'm really satisfied with my decision not to mess around with details and particular things and just restrict "digital" time in general. All the tasks just distribute automatically, like water into communicating vessels. You won't watch a movie if you only have 2 hours left and a bunch of work to do. But if you have 10 hours of computer time, you'll most likely decide to watch a movie or even two. The one thing that I still want to mess around with a little is the time limit itself. At first, I felt like 6 hours would be too little because I have so many things to do - work, study, personal projects, website, emails, movies, music, and so on. But after a few days, I realized that I can do 4 hours. Seriously, it would be enough. I won't do it right now, though. I want to get a feel for this new thing and check what tasks are easier and better to optimize first, so it wouldn't be just a race against the clock.

Obviously, my main concern is work. As a somewhat freelancer, I have a problem:

• freelance pros: you don't have any schedule
• freelance cons: you don't have any schedule

This means it's just on me how many hours per day I work. I can split the volume into small pieces during the whole week, or I can sit for 12 hours in one go, so the next few days are completely free. I like this a lot more than the traditional 9-to-5, but it collides with my idea to spend 6 (or 4) hours a day max in front of the display. It means that I 100% need to work every day to get rid of the possibility that one day I'll have to work 9 hours, which is against my new rule. (I imagine the faces of people who work 9 to 5 all week reading this... I'm sorry.) Anyway, I'll probably test a 5-hour-a-day schedule next week, and we'll see how it goes.

What has changed?

• Noise in the head is almost gone. The main struggle disappeared in the first week. Maybe it's not the direct consequence of just sitting less in front of the computer, but it worked as intended.

• Writing feels easier because the noise is gone. Also, this post by Steve helps a lot. I still see a bunch of garbage words in my texts, but I feel like it gets better bit by bit.

• I walk much more, but it's surely the weather. Once it gets warm again, I'm not leaving the house!

• I read again; it's easier than ever. If the only alternative is to sit in silence, reading becomes the most entertaining thing in the whole world. And still, I spend a lot of time sitting in silence. I don't have the possibility to buy real books where I live (as you can tell by the beautiful pictures within this text), so I read from my phone, which is very uncomfortable because of the screen size and the fact that I hate smartphones in general. I'm thinking about e-books, but everything I found is also questionable. I'll research it a bit more and maybe buy something later.

• I've decided to give myself a second chance with meditation because of sitting in silence. My first attempt a few years ago failed almost immediately, but this time I found a book - Natural Meditation by Dean Sluyter - which helps me a lot right now. It's definitely a more populist approach, but the classical "don't move & don't think" just didn't work for me. I've been trying different techniques from this book during the week, and yesterday I felt something very different for 3 or 4 seconds - almost like my body disappeared. Is this the thing that everybody talks about? I was never really into such stuff, but a lot of people I'm interested in (Philip Glass, David Lynch, etc.) are into meditation and spiritual practices, so it's time to figure this out myself, I guess.

• Live sounds have a ton more depth than digital sounds. All the reflections, the room tone - so cool. I miss my piano; it would be such a great fit for my current situation. At least I have a few guitars with me! Maybe I'll find a harmonica or something similar just for fun.

• I spend almost all my digital hours on work/study or writing, so I don't have time to listen to music, which is an essential thing for me. On the other hand, I've noticed that I value each album or song even more since I can't just listen to them at any time. So, the conclusion that I made is that I need to make music a non-computer activity. It really overlaps with my physical media idea, but I'm still figuring out how to do it correctly, considering my audio setup. Basically, I only need a gapless CD player, a disk drive, some CDs, and cases. The most expensive thing would be the player since it's really hard to find something decent under $200–300. If you have any suggestions or experience in this stuff, please let me know.

• Also, I've been thinking about making writing a non-computer activity too, but it's definitely much harder, so I'll leave this task for the future. I already write most of the drafts for posts and emails on paper, but it still takes a huge amount of time to transfer them to the computer and edit mistakes. I don't have any ideas how to optimize it more at this moment.

• I've finally started going through Baseline Design Bootcamp, an amazing free resource that I've mentioned a bunch of times already. Because of the time restriction, I'm moving very slowly through the chapters, and it feels great. It feels like it's supposed to be that way, not 6 hours a day. I like the amount of practical assignments - dry theory rarely works for me - so it's nice to consolidate knowledge with some tasks.

That's all for now. It's already 12 o'clock in the afternoon, meaning that I should turn off the computer. I've been working since 8 AM, so I'll try to do 4 hours today.

Have a nice weekend!