Discipline: In Life & Media
As I continue on the journey of life, one of the things I find that I am most in need of is an increased sense of discipline. I’ve always been a person who thrives in structured environments like school, a camp ministry, or a factory but when I left that behind for dat Artist life, I didn’t realize how hard it would be for me to develop this sense. Part of the reason for this is that I had relied on organizations and jobs to provide me the impetus to be disciplined in my behaviour. When I was scared of being fired or incentivised to volunteer for overtime, it gave me the illusion of discipline without ever teaching me to have any. Working from home, a flexible part time job, and the need to spend huge amounts of time looking for gigs when you are a freelancer, became real problems for me and I realized, unfortunately just recently, that I need to begin building discipline into my life.
I started being more dedicated to setting weekly goals and task lists, began really taking stock of my finances by working with my wife on them (she’s great at saving), getting back to the gym a couple times a week, and eating healthier. For sure, I am nowhere near done with this process. Each of those things mentioned above is in its nascent stages of development in my life but with determination and hard work I am looking forward to the little seeds of physical health, mental health, and financial health sprouting into full grown flowers.
I’m a Millennial and it’s taken me a long time to admit to myself that the cliche’ of Millennials thinking the world or society should be handed to them on a silver platter is something that I do struggle with quite a bit (though I don’t believe that it is as rampant as people will many times imply). Thing is, I didn’t realize it. In my head and heart, I WAS working hard. REAL hard. I stressed constantly, started projects, had great ideas, and tried to get people on board for them, but the fact off the matter is, I gave up too easily on most things that I tried. Tenacity has never been among my virtues.
As I have begun growing in this area, one of the many things that has helped me grow has been the introduction of non-volitional fasting into my life. I fasted when I was in my twenties but it was always very self directed, giving up what I wanted, when I wanted. It was good for me and I highly recommend it but when I became an Orthodox Christian I started fasting according to the church calendar and that has made a huge difference for me. There is something even more remarkably difficult about abstaining from meat and dairy on a Wednesday when you are doing it because someone else told you that you should rather than because you decided that you needed to eat healthier.
For me, all of the disciplines I have begun are spiritual but that is simply because of the way I see things. Most people would see a wide array of disciplines like exercise,, diet, financial planning, and verbal/on-line self-restraint as disciplines we would all benefit from if we adopted them. It is simply healthy, as a human being, to have discipline in your life and not be given solely to ephemeral whim as a way of life.
It strikes me that the same can be said of our media lives. Media is a larger and more integrated part of our lives than ever. Everyone has stories of beginning a show just to realize 8 hours later that we’ve binge watched it all, getting high and staying up all night watching Youtube, or skipping a function we’ve been dreading to binge eat and watch pornography (no? just me?).
But it isn’t just the quantity of things we choose to watch. It is also the reason we choose what we do and the quality of what we set before our eyes. Working at a video store I see all sorts of people with many kinds of viewing habits. Is it healthy to ONLY watch action films even if you love action movies? Hallmark movies? Christian movies? What about Superhero movies or Blockbusters? None of them are wrong or unhealthy, per se’, but I have trouble believing that only watching one kind of thing is really very profitable to our spirit or emotional/mental state. I even think that about arthouse movies. If that’s all you watch, I truly believe you are missing out. If every movie we see is a Disney movie, or YouTube Red content, or a specific cable channel, think about the massive amounts of information, influence, money, and even control that we are giving over to executives and industries that care very little for us except for what’s in our wallet.
I’m learning the hard way that sometimes in life I have to make hard decisions, like not stopping for fast food whenever I feel like it or balancing my checkbook even if I’m tired and want to just veg, but I am also learning that I need discipline in my media. I have to stop defaulting to Youtube. I’ve skipped work, exhausted myself with late nights, and been short with my wife as result of simply failing to turn off the screen. I have to curtail the number of times I sit down and just scroll through Amazon Prime Streaming till I find some movie to which I can turn off my brain. I have to (because of my work) resist the urge to watch just-another-movie when I know I have movies that I should watch so I can review it for True Myth Media or maybe just because I think it will be enlightening as opposed to entertaining.
I have to build discipline into my life; my Media Life.
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