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Although it is not yet my usual night time writing, I'd like to write todays jounral whenever I have something to say, I should really start keeping a notes app as well.. anyway. As I was reading blue highways, I've come to a chapter about trappist monks, in which the titular willaim least heat moon reads a book from one of the monks that talks about solitude and a deeper connection with spiritualism. He connects this to his own father who oft dissapeared to become closer to the spirits. When I read this, I realized that, for some reason, isolationism is a common trend between pretty much all religions and their extremists, think nuns, monks, even such things as cults or non religious entities. It seems that people think they are closer with god when they are by themselves. I wonder, then, why this is. why do people seek solitude to commune with gods? Functuanlly I think in reality what they seek is themselves. away from other distractions, surrounded by no or only a few induviduals sharing your isolationism view, it becomes a lot harder to rely on distractions to prevent introspection about yourself. If you truely wanted too, you could fill almost your entire life with distraction and vice, especially in the modern era, and never once think deeply about who YOU are. it is my completely unbacked opinions that the spirits these extremists seek is their own, and often an outside entity of which to build a structred life around can help them not only seek themselves out more effectively but to also improve themselves. These are just my two cents of course. Funny enough, some of the most extreme monks often say it "gives them more time" my first thought is always time to do what, exactly. if you are removing all the excess, what exactly do you hope to fill those 5, 10, 15 hours of your day you get back doing? for these people, it is often exactly that, introspection, prayer, or some mix of the two. For myself however, with the dumbphone, I must ask myself a similar question, if I seek to reclaim my days from excess.. what do I want to fill that time with?

I bought the flip phone finally, so That'll be neat, its silver which matches my camera!! gets here on the 9th, will update on functinoality and whatnot. as for what I did today, nothing, literally nothing. I don't even know haha. Hopefully tmrw will be better on makign things happnen.