For many months, maybe even a good few years now, I’ve had a backlog of training videos on my phone, and a backlog of videos on my work phone, all filmed with the intention of sharing.

As each month goes by, and I take photos of my piggies, my garden, transfer photos over from my Nikon or download photos from Drive for a project I’ve come up with, my phone gets fuller and fuller. I make zero progress with either my work or personal photo/video editing/uploading projects.

And the mental weight gets heavier and heavier.

I watch myself almost out of body as my procrastination and doomscrolling avoidance behaviours start getting extreme.

Sending my mental health plummeting. Conscious that I’m self destructing. Too overwhelmed with the sheer volume of tasks and projects and ideas to handle the idea of even trying to plan out some type of “priority” list. (No more lists!! Yet… and yet… I cannot live without my lists.)

I could make use of the “No Distraction” and “Focus” modes on my phone, to force me to do any number of the “non phone” jobs on my neverending list, but we all know how effective these are to the stubborn mind. If you know you can override that mode, you will just go into settings and turn the dumb thing off so you can go back to wasting your life looking at your phone. Why? Because it’s the easy option. Like turning your alarm off then going straight back to dreamland.

I know how destructive this behaviour is. I know how badly it affects my mental health. I see it from both internal and external perspectives not only in hindsight, but while it is happening. And I am damned if I know how to even begin dealing with it. Perhaps I am hoping that, in resurrecting my writing, it will prove to offer some sort of epiphany as often happened when I pushed myself to articulate the chaos stirring round inside my brain.

I don’t deny the smartphone is a brilliant invention, but everything about it is designed to draw you in and create an addict out of you, even if you don’t already have an addictive personality (as I do, having suffered intrusive and compulsive thoughts and behaviours for many years).

This all applies most heavily of course to social media. I don’t game, although I tell myself I want to as I figure it’s got to be better than Zuckerberg and Co’s monstrous creation, but games don’t hook me in. I do the NY Times puzzles daily, which is a small step to regaining control that I am content with. But social media stole my soul.

I doomscroll through BBC News. I doomscroll through the Daily Mail once in a while. But I mainly doomscroll entirely pointlessly through Instagram and Facebook. On a bad day (or what the billionaires behind these apps would call a fantastic day) I’ll spend 7, 8 or more hours just flipping between these apps.

I tried switching it up. See if I could get addicted to TikTok and Snapchat, you know the latest tech, at least mix up my addiction, but I’m either too old (definitely too old if you ask my siblings who are precisely half my age), or I really cannot be bothered.

Let’s face it. It’s just that I simply cannot cope with anything else on my plate.

That’s the devil talking. The angel on my other shoulder suggests that maybe there’s hope, that by listening I will hear a voice within me growing ever louder warning me that I’m in dangerous territory, and that’s why I’m experiencing this level of fatigue with all aspects of life. That my relationship with my phone is toxic, and is affecting my relationships, my work, my creativity.

Ironic, considering the way smartphones and social media are full of apps and pages to allegedly help you find your creative spark, teach you exciting new things, how to fix relationships, how to get your focus back. How to break away from the thing you’re holding onto right now.

It’s so twisted you could almost laugh; that advice to help you reduce your reliance on social media is almost always delivered to you through the very devil you know. Such is the power and unfortunate necessity of social media in today’s business age. If you run a small business, you have to be on socials. There’s no tool on Earth as effective at reaching your target audience with a few swipes on a touchscreen, than social media. I totally get why businesses of all sizes employ someone just to manage their social media. It is a full time job. And I’ve been treating my training videos with the same weight as my work videos, effectively doubling my workload, making no progress with either.

Regrettably it’s a very real pandemic that, within only it’s second decade of common usage, is already threatening as much as a third of the world’s population (based on the average spread of ages of daily users in the age 10-40 bracket).

What can we do about this problem? I know I’m not alone in my lapse into the dark pit where days are wasted on scrolling and app-jumping. The answer isn’t in the smartphone. The phone isn’t technically the problem here, it’s just a case of the tools literally being in hand at a point I am not in full and sound mind.

The answer can only be found away from the smartphone. And that has led me on even further to consider why I continue to film my bouldering, yoga and ice skating. When’s the last time I shared a video of all 3 of those activities? I can tell you I’ve not posted one positive ice skating video – just the fails – no bouldering content at all since climbing a V3 about 6 months ago, and yoga probably worked out to about once every other month over the last two years.

I began filming my practice as standard about a decade ago, to be able to see if what I was feeling in my body translated to what my body was actually doing from an outside perspective. It was great for that and it has certainly been fun to share my journey over the years. I’m glad I have photos of things I used to be able to do, things I tried, and I’m glad of a few of the videos. I’m proud of my achievements and I don’t exactly want to delete it all, but I’m struggling to find purpose in continuing to record anything new.

If I’m not filming with any purpose in mind, then what am I doing? Why am I filling my phone up and adding this stress, this pressure, to edit these videos and get them shared when I don’t even know if I want to share them any more? It’s not to learn. The ice skating side of things it can actually be useful if I need to see at ice-level why my spins aren’t working. Sometimes it gives me a boost to see my yoga self-practice looking smooth, even if I do just whack it on hyperlapse. It’s okay to feel like that about it because I’m not attaching any notion of presenting it to anyone. But somehow in continuing to film every training session, every climb, every skate, I’ve become so bogged down and stuck that I lost my purpose. I realise now that I do it out of habit, and it’s almost an unconscious habit in the sense that I know it will only clutter up my phone – and my mind – and yet still somewhere deep down I am telling myself that I will share this content. I will put this fantastic video together and post it online, if only for me to look back on at some unknown future date.

I want to. Only I never do, these days.

It’s not aligning with where I am in life right now. It’s directing my attention to the wrong place and unless I need to film for a specific reason, it stops now. It’s time to simplify. Step back, take stock. Time to assess where my energy needs to be driven and work on building up the discipline needed to collate and schedule business and work related things. These awful platforms which I wilfully exhibited on need to become a stage I occupy on my terms. It’s time to step up in the right arena and produce and direct the show I know I can put on.