When we first got this assignment, I was not too worried about putting down everything for 8 hours as I have done that before. The only difference being consciously choosing to put down everything for 8 hours versus subconsciously putting everything down because you do not need it. During this summer I have taken countless hours without using any digital devices because I was either too busy drawing/painting or reading for hours on end, but again, I did not prepare for any of that and it just happened. However, with our assignment I must admit that I felt a little stressed knowing that I’m going to do this on purpose and when I did, it felt so much like fasting during Ramadan. Just eagerly waiting for time to be up so you can go back to doing what you usually do.
Furthermore, I chose not to prepare anything the day ahead to fill my time like preparing readings as I still had the rest of the weekend to do them later and I wanted to do this assignment with the least amount of preparation to have a more realistic experience rather than feeling like I am preparing to avoid the inevitable. With that in mind, my entire 8-hours were filled with catching up reading comics/visual novels that I have had for too long alongside other books as well. I also did a lot of cooking, mainly out of boredom but also necessity. Since I was not staying on campus for the weekend I was not able to go to the dining hall for the assignment and ended up spending most if not all my time alone.
Some of the struggles that I had, although minimal, were figuring out how to tell time. As I realized after starting that I always look at my phone to tell time. All the watches that I had were dead and I had to go scavenging for a clock somewhere in my house. I also tend to tweet a lot about what I’m doing/the media I am consuming. So, considering that a lot of what I was doing was reading comics, some for the first time, I had no outlet for my thoughts or opinions. Although technically I do have pen and paper, but it is not the same as knowing you have an audience you would connect more with, or just share different thoughts and opinions with. Even the format in which I wrote my journal entries were like I had a character limit.
