the art of escaping doom-scrolling

Hii loves, its been so long since I wrote here, my exams ended almost a month ago and, wow saying that out loud feels incredible. I’ve been feeling all sorts of emotions that come along with graduation, the excitement & relief for the fact that the exams r over and now I can plan my next phase of world domination, aka coming back to my creative self, tending to the body due for rest, drawing, writing, reading, and what not. But some things just never change, the feeling of dread that a world out there soul-stricken by capitalism awaits you. Sigh. But hey, your girl is officially a graduate now!! I also turned 21 this month and am so grateful to all the people who made it memorable.

I love how in most phases of my life reading has been so close to my heart, like a comforting blanket. I realised during my exams, that after deleting Instagram, I needed atleast one self-indulging hobby that would help me not go absolutely insane whilst trying to survive the 1 hellish month that seemed like eternity really, March. And if you will then please tell me I ain’t the only weirdo who thought that March felt immensely elongated for some reason. Personally I wouldn’t recommend being a student in March but lest you wanna give up educating yourself, its inevitable.

So, I went back to a habit I left back in sem 4, aka almost an year ago, the habit of reading a romance novel in my study breaks. And the remarkable point is that technically, reading is a slow dopamine activity, which lucky for us, means that transitioning to another activity like studying or doing the dishes would be substantially easier than, when you try to convince yourself to study after doom-scrolling on tiktok or instagram for even a handful of 15-30 mins. Thus, I started with a book I bought like almost 2 years ago, Powerless by Lauren Roberts (yes ik the stuff goin on w her now, i didn’t know a month ago sadly). Reading the book for even 20 mins in my study breaks significantly boosted my morale, to study , to live, to not give up.

I think a lot of us have this eccentric relationship with most social media platforms (not pinterest and substack, these 2 are the lomls). It all feels great for a week or 2 after deleting IG or Tiktok, but at some point we start craving those lil instantaneous dopamine hits, almost like an addict, but maybe the real question we need to ask ourselves is, “What am I trying to replace it with?” and no I don’t mean those shallow promises like ‘oh am just gonna consume more insightful and educational content on yt instead’, ‘oh i should prolly just scroll on twitter or substack because they’re more productive’ and well the reality is we’re just deluding ourselves to believe in a make-shift reality which isn’t gonna last long, you will be tempted again and again, unless you actually substitute your doomscrolling with some other hobbies, that you actually wanna engage more with.

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I for instance, deleted IG in March, and it was solely to ‘lock-in’, I hadn’t thought of anything that I’d substitute scrolling with in particular, coz duh obviously I was barely holding up with all the exam stress, but after 2 weeks of deleting IG, I unfortunately started missing the silly IG memes and reels. Then came the spectacular reading in my study breaks phase and things just changed for the best, I was more focused in my studies, missing IG wayyyy lesser than ever and now I had a whole another fantasy novel to keep up with, an intriguing one at that.

And well that was just a beginning of my active reading era and I finally called off my slump, for now I can gladly announce that I’ve finished reading a total of 5 books in the last 2 months, surely I will name them all for you King of Envy, Powerless (books that I read during my exams), Bride, Circe and Mate (books that I read after my exams ended) and am currently reading Reckless. It’s just fascinating to me that am finally back in my OG reading era like in 2022.

I guess what I am really trying to say is that, I hope you can find your balance and actually replace the scrolling with something that makes your heart fulfilled and your curiosity quivering with joy. Some of the hobbies I’ve been returning back to are, drawing with oil pastels, doing a diamond painting, reading, making stuff using air dry clay, colouring-in colouring books, baking cookies, cooking my fav dishes, reading substack articles, dancing to my fav music and everything else that I can do in my power, to not let myself fall into the trap of endless instant-gratification loop.

The reality of it all is, we are all constantly trying to escape, escape the things we need to do, people we need to deal with, emotions we need to feel, situations we need to confront, and tbh there’s no shame in wanting to flee for a while, to give yourself a moment to breathe, but truly are we really getting the peace on the most overstimulating social media platforms? Personally, Substack feels sm more insightful, reading people’s thoughts, their whimsical days and epiphanies is far more like a breath of fresh air than anything.

Anyways writing this after so long felt so good. Tysm for reading and omg we crossed 300K guys!!! I love each one of you sm <333

xoxo

Shreya