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.

I sit here surrounded by a room full of stuff. Work stuff, hobby stuff, household stuff, guinea pig stuff….there’s just stuff. Everywhere.

It’s so far removed from how I grew up, but one thing I’ve come to learn after 10 years living away from “home” (i.e. with my parents) is that how my home is kept is a pretty sound indicator of how my mind is keeping.

If there’s stuff cluttering the house, there is guaranteed stuff cluttering my mind. It probably goes a long way to explaining the nights I can’t sleep then pull a blinder the next day and blitz through a ton of things and not feel tired after it all, and that’s fine – even if it’s woefully unsustainable.

Whilst I am managing my chronic pain and fatigue better, I’ve become complacent and convinced myself that there’s nothing really wrong with me, I should be able to do life the way everyone else does.

If the girls I went to school with can juggle a newborn, a toddler, a school age kid, a life partner, their extended family, friends, careers, housework and hobbies and still find time to binge on Netflix at 8pm on a Wednesday evening, why can’t I?

The truth is we adapt to the life we have, and until then, we live within our means. If we don’t have the pressures of X and Y, there is no need to even think about Z. We may envisage Z as impossible, until we have to incorporate it, until we have no choice. Most people are never ready to become parents, it happens and you roll with the kicks. You don’t think about how you adapt, you just do. Nobody is ever prepared for the pain and reality of divorce, but you can bet that when you thought about X and Y, your vision of Z was totally different to the Z you find yourself living.

I know how lucky I am to have the luxury of being self-employed and choosing to work from home. So many adults don’t get that choice. I’m lucky my husband is okay with the fact he’s the main breadwinner. It doesn’t mean there’s no pressure on me. If anything, I feel a lot of pressure, I feel a lot of weight around failure and stress to try and be the best version of me for everyone all the time, and I feel like I can’t complain about it. But that all comes from me, jaded from my experiences in life, my experiences with relationships and conformity and the resolutely not normal life I had growing up.

There are two big carryovers that increase that pressure on me. Both come from within, are deeply ingrained, but I understand intimately. Much of my stress is self-inflicted, and I know why I do it to myself.

The trouble with having had mental and then additional physical chronic illness from childhood is that I’ve always had something to hide behind when things get tough. Not replying to messages? Sorry, I slept in until 4pm then have not stopped since in order to catch up around the house, the weekend really wiped me out! Not getting the house tidied up in a basic way like making the bed, or doing the washing up… Yeah my joints are really painful today, I’ll add it all to the list.

I have come to realise, and accept, that I have many a time used my illnesses as excuses. While the excuses may be true fundamentally – today my full body pain is about a 5 with some localised 6/7s – I cannot say that this pain is the reason I slept in until 12pm and then got back in bed after dressing. Were it not for my determination to read and making myself sit up in bed, I’d still be there right now (3.50pm and counting). Sleeping. It was the act of putting my wheatpad in the microwave and heating it that got me out of my head, because I told myself I’d do this one task: get the ingredients in the soupmaker and turn it on, then I could get back in bed.

I have not been back to bed. (Although I am getting really tired and my pain is up to a 7 head to toe right now. Mental exertion affects the body too!). My wheatpad is sitting in the microwave, cold and untouched. The soup is cooling and portioned ready to freeze. The kitchen is clean. There is no washing up to do or dry or put away. All the floors are vacuumed. I’ve sorted the newspapers out in the pigs room. And I opened my laptop and came straight here to write this.

My willpower, my self-discipline, are my biggest weaknesses. Despite it taking so little to kickstart my mind and body, I spend an awful lot of time in my own head convincing myself that there is no point to anything. Dredging up the counterargument to that is not easy, and it isn’t a once-in-a-while kinda thing. This happens every single day.

My self-disclipline skills are lacking in large part due to my abnormal adolescence and early adulthood. I last attended school at 13, and I have never been employed. I have always lived on my terms. I was able to sit my GCSEs because the LEA (Local Education Authority) in Saffron Walden put in place tutors to come to my home and set work for me, meaning I had accountability and routine. There were times I was genuinely too unwell to attend a lesson even in my own home, but we worked with it and ultimately I succeeded. 5 GCSEs. Not having a science qualification or only having 5 GCSEs has never bothered me, because I know what it took to manage that, the hell I was in at that time. I take most pride from the fact I’d mastered some major life lessons at 15 that millions don’t even begin to see as important until long into adulthood:

You don’t have to do things by the book. You don’t have to conform. If anything, it is up to you to make the most of your situation and make life conform to you.

Coming back to how this all contributed to my ill-disciplined current life: I know how to make things work for me. I know how to kickstart myself, as hard as it is every time. And I am not afraid to take the norm and either discarding it fully, or shaping it into a model that fits me. What I struggle with is having the drive and the mental compartmentalisation to do everything on my back. Every minute aspect of my business is all me. The housework is 90% me. Projects like kitchen renovations require my energy and time. My husband needs my attention. My family need my support. I have neglected dear friends who I value immensely but have treated them so badly (not even reading messages sent weeks ago) I honestly don’t deserve any grace or kindness from them. My suffering in this way is impacting those around me, my business and it is so much the opposite of how, and who, I want to be.

I simply can’t fathom how to spread my energy between all of these, still have time to rest without breaking the flow, and somehow find space in my brain to create, or to learn, or to think. How does everyone do it?

And then, when I’ve found the motivation and I’ve done some housework and some work and some personal development stuff, the ideas and energy builds up every evening and through the night until I sleep…and on waking, I am starting every single thing from scratch. Zero motivation. Zero drive. Zero interest in any of the things I was so passionate and excited about just 12 hours earlier. I am dragged right back to ground zero, every day.

I am aware I’m very much an all-or-nothing person. I am generally all in, or I am not in at all. I’m trying to work on it, but the first, biggest and most convincing thing in my brain is, “I’ll do all this and feel great then watch it all build up again like I did nothing at all, and have to do it all again tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after…“.

The enforced stop/start routine of “day and night” screws me over so bad. I don’t understand why life is like that. I do get it, I totally understand what the human body needs. It’s just my brain? My brain does not operate on that same plane. My brain is not and never has been a 9-5 shift worker where no matter what, it pings on at 9 and switches off at 5 and I can move seamlessly in and out.

My body might need a particular cycle to function, and I’m sort of getting to grips with serving it a little bit better, but seriously need the instruction manual for my brain.

I have every idea yet still I have no idea whatsoever.