2025-06-26: Facing reality.

Well, it took me a little bit longer than a couple of days to post next entry. To be exact, I've missed my schedule by 10 days.

In the meantime, I've passed (most) of my exams. I, obviously, failed at my undertaking from previous entry. Crisis is the worst time to start changes drastic as that. Sitting at your desk with a computer turned on is a very tempting situation to just open web browser and watch some random shit, and I can't just close it, I have to Do Things there. This is especially sabotaging my efforts since I work a desk job that requires me to use computer, I can't just put it in a safe, as any protections, bloackades I made I can (and often do) turn off when I feel an impulse do get dopamine hit. After passing exams, of course, I lied to myself that I can control myself. Fool. It's always like that. And it's not like I'm completely done with my exams, I still have to pass one this week.

But at least I did get out and I've read about half of new Witcher book. It's good, it felt like when I was reading «Last Wish» for the first time when I was a teenager. Sapkowski's still good. Also, it means I did not completely fail.

Also, I've heard about codependency in these kinds of addictions. Sadly, it fits, since it's my girlfriend that's more glued to computer and phone than me. With her I feel like she's reinforcing my worst habits. I've tried to help her, but she doesn't want to change anything in herself, so I essentially gave up, and it was her that influenced me, not the other way around.

I know, as an adult human being I am responsible for my own actions, not other people. I'm not denying that. But it is true that codependency exists and makes quitting this harder.

When trying to learn I've also noticed that it's very easy to distract me, that outside stimuli is awfully disruptive for my attention. I want to yell when she's doing anything more than just breathing next to me. And even that can be too much. It is highly dysfunctional situation, a proof that situation like this has rotten my brain. Moreover, I quickly forget what I wanted to do (e.g. I open computer in order to do a specific thing, half a minute later it's gone what that has been from my mind). That's one reason why I write down my plans for a day in bullet points. Sadly I keep ignoring it and not realising them, or just a minority.

Oh, and Meta being greedy corp that they are added a button to the mobile Messenger app that opens embedded web version of Facebook. I bet they've noticed that many people are using Messenger exclusively and want them to get back hooked on feed. Sadly it worked on me. I'm spending way too much time on questionable entertainment and I wonder what to do with this situation. Messenger Lite is no longer an option. Maybe I'll go search for earlier version, without this "feature"?

I am highly afraid of looking at my screen time. That's good. It means that, on more subconcious level, I know that when "bar goes up" on a chart it is a bad thing. I shouldn't run away from that and I'm going to check regularly those numbers. My phone has this as a built-in feature, but I've also managed to set this on my PC.

Beweare. a little bit of technicality about Linux and nerding out follows.

For tracking time on my computer I use ActivityWatch. I have much to say about it. Used software stack is quite something, on one hand GUI is a Flask app (using Werkzeug, displaying nice warning in the log that says "WARNING: This is a development server. Do not use it in a production deployment. Use a production WSGI server instead."), on the other it relies on PyQt for watching user's activity. Why double stack then and not use PyQt for both modules? Also there are multiple copies of the same libraries present in the downloadable zip with binaries. I wonder how much it could be cut in size if not for that. But I shouldn't complain I suppose, it looks like it has been built by web devs, they could make it an Electron app.

As for more practical side, sadly it does not work on Wayland by default. Worse, devs don't tell about that on their site, app doesn't give any kind of warning on startup, or even doesn't throw any error in logs. I found this discussion that links to this watcher - but I don't care about using Wayland enough, so I've just switched back to X11 for now. I don't know any other free app for Linux in this area with similar functionality (GUI, history, grouping into categories). I don't wan't to play Karen here, but Wayland is unevitable in the end, and they didn't address this situation since 2017. One sentence of warning on the download page is too much I suppose?

I'm being salty, but in fact I should be grateful that someone has put an effort to make it in their spare time and it's available for free.

I think I'm going to move this to a static site generator or just use Jinja with some basic script. It would be hard to maintain in the future, if I wanted to, for example, add items to navbar. Also, while it somehow works on mobile, I need to polish it up a little bit (navbar especially). I think a heavily dithered anteater in the header would fit nicely, but right now I have almost no graphic design skills. RSS feed would also be nice, I suppose?

Nerding out ends.

My plan for next week or so is to do, in fact, close computer and phone in a metaphorical safe. I just have to write out that last exam, and then I'm taking a couple days off at work.

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