On Looking Inwards

I think that there’s so much inside of us, in our soul, in our bodies, that needs to be heard, that cannot be heard, because we distract ourselves from external sources. And I think it’s possible that we’re generally afraid of what it is that is inside of us, so much so that we drown ourselves with our phones. Who knows if there is a castle full of mysteries and easter eggs only if you bother looking.

And I wasn’t happy with the amount of phone uses that I was doing, or having conversations that were not necessarily the most fulfilling or joyful. And I started to introspect and ask myself this question that, should I keep doing this, or should I turn around? I figured one way to test myself and to test my faith to introspection was to give up any external stimulation, except journaling and coding. I did that being heading out to a rural bulgarian village in the middle of nowhere with serene mountains to look at and not much else.

I think this experiment entailed a few things: I wasn’t allowed to use my phone till 8 PM except maybe 1-3 times to respond to messages from friends/family who wanted to be certain that I wasn’t kidnapped. I didn’t really have anyone to talk to besides my landlady Tsvetina who is an awesome person and really fun but ideally I aimed at just looking inwards to find out some deeper truths about my being.

I also didn’t really want to be memetically influenced by the life that I came from, so over time I curbed the usage of reddit,instagram to less than 20 minutes. I did that by using an app on my browser and it worked surprizingly well.

I replaced all th extra time I had with work and with starting at the mountians and laying down watching the sky while the warm sun light hits my face. Somehow this was cathartic and far more satsifying that doomscrolling instagram.

One of the main things I learned is that now I could sleep well and was very relaxed physically and emotionally. I could sleep for 8 hours straight for multiple days without using any sleep supplement and I think that was just such a surprising revelation. To be able to sleep so peacefully for so many nights back to back was just unreal. I had many years of insomnia and that was cured. I felt very relaxed from that one. I realized I didn’t need my phone and I didn’t need external information from other sources to entertain myself. I felt like I wasn’t exactly gaining any knowledge from external sources that I used to frequent most of it was just an escape from my inner voice waiting to be heard.

And Just like that, I think I ended my many years of Insomnia.