This whole question of what to do with one's mind. Introspection sounds nice but it's not always useful. What I'm kind of trying to do with technology is study

This whole question of what to do with one's mind. Introspection sounds nice but it's not always useful. What I'm kind of trying to do with technology is study or learn for many hours every day, it's just that I'm not doing a great job, because the stressful approach makes it hard to find and approach real valuable material. I'm also trying to keep up with some kind of professional community as well as some cultural forms of community. I appreciate the professional or hobbyist communities because basically they don't revolve around Donald Trump and I can pretend the world is basically sane. I've reflected a lot but not really gotten anywhere. I really value two different three month periods in the past few years when I haven't had internet access at home at all, though. Having hours every day when my mind wasn't hooked up to high frequency information systems was pretty wonderful. There's something in Bob Dylan's memoirs, the first book which is the only one I read (I don't finish books anymore), about how his "news" for a while was the history of the Byzantine empire (or something) because that's what he was studying at the time. I'm more and more interested in the visceral feeling of "offline" and I think it's a source of refreshment that is becoming scarce (this ought to be a considerable driver of interest in meditation retreats).