Security blanket technology in Adventures in paradise

Since I updated my apps using my friend's wifi, my Simpsons Tapped Out game no longer logs in :( I hate when apps do that. Grindr did it a lot back in the day, but for some reason has really improved, although that was also probably due to a shitty phone and service provider. This time I know it's the apps fault, not only through my own experience (or rather, non-experience) of it, but pretty much all of the reviews on the Play Store are saying that people have lost their progress etc.
I had a slight glimmer of hope when it started downloading some updates tonight (I keep periodically checking it to see if it'll log me in, like a desperate asshole) but once again, it just logged me straight out of the app back to the homescreen. Ironically, SongPop stopped working after the last update, but now has started working again. You win some, you lose some :P

Oh well, I guess it'll keep me from wasting time on it like I usually do haha.

There was a segment on TV today talking about how much screen-time children should have during their day. As we all know, we are surrounded by screens these days, and it crosses my mind quite often that I am really over-doing it. I mean, REALLY overdoing it. They said on the TV that children between 0 and 2 should not be having any screen time at all (umm, yes, I figure that's pretty much common sense). Then they say children between 2 and 5 should be having no more than 1 hour per day. Children over 5 should not be having any more than 2 hours per day of screen-time. Screen-time means all screens - computers, TV, phones... I don't really see why a 5 year old needs a phone anyway, but a lot of them seem to have them! Anyway, my point is me. I don't even want to know how many hours a day I spend looking at a form of screen. I am just thankful I don't have a job where I look at a screen, because if I did, I reckon I'd be looking at them at an alarming amount of time!
I already feel like I look at them an alarming amount of time, between writing here, browsing facebook WAAAAY too much and, god, don't even get me started on looking at my phone or watching TV (either at mine or friend's places). I'm starting to feel like I should set myself an intervention. I'm going to be 40 before I know it, and will have spent most of my life looking at some form of screen. I don't particularly want to be on my death bed, and all that's coming back to me is a world symbol with a number in the corner of it...

Pretty depressing.

Thankfully my job is physical and I do go to the gym and hang out with friends, but I don't have enough close friends to really tear me away from what I do in my boredom hours, which is a lot. I've always been comfortable with my own company, and a large part of that involves my electronic devices. Even when i spilled tea all over my laptop a few months ago, I was trying to improvise by using my tablet to do what I used to, even hooking up a bluetooth keyboard and bluetooth mouse to it so I could mimic laptop movements.
Of course that didn't work that same, but maybe it shows I have a problem, or an addiction even? They say that social media is actually causing more harm than good and encouraging anti-social behaviour. Yeah, I'd go along with that, in a lot of ways.

In an ideal world, where I had a full-time day job and my night job, I'm sure things would be different. I'd probably be too tired to sit online all day, and I'd be more productive because I'd want to fit gym in between insane work hours. But right at this stage at least, I don't have insane work hours. Inevitably that will change at some point in time and maybe then, this entry won't even be applicable?

I tend to sleep in really late, because I go to bed really late. A good night for me is getting to sleep around 3am, as I finish at midnight or 1am. If I'm still awake when the sun comes up, I feel quite bad about myself and then I end up waking up even later than the late time I usually wake up. It's not unusual for me to be getting out of bed, eating breakfast at 1pm or 2pm. I've even had breakfast at 4pm once and that wasn't that long ago and I remember thinking that this was ridiculous, as I'd wasted the entire daylight hours and the sun was going down in around two hours.
I even forced myself to go outside, just so that I could stand in the remaining remnants of the sunlight on the footpath around the corner. It was lovely.

It's strange being a nightshifter sometimes, but I do look at my current situation and see it as much better than it was. Finishing at midnight or 1am is much healthier than it was when I finished at 5am. However, when I did that, I was usually awake until midday and it was only then that I went to sleep. Now I tend to wake up around then instead, but it is nice to sleep some of the darkness hours now at least. That's how I look at it.

So where's the happy medium when it comes to screen-time? i do so much of my leisurely stuff and hobbies online. I tend to only have about four websites I look at often, and occasionally find myself refreshing the page because nothing new has come up haha. Does anyone else do this? Is it just me? Has technology taken over?

Having said that, yesterday, I got myself out of the house in the late afternoon and I took my bag down to the park (like I had planned to last week). I set up a towel on the grass, and I got out my book and read a fair bit more of it. That was nice. I was with nature. Mind you, that's the park a girl got killed in a few months back, so there weren't that many people walking through it, but a couple were. It started to get cold way too quickly though and I put my jacket on for a little while, but then headed back home. It was only down the road, so it wasn't far.

I want to do that more often. Just get a really nice day outside on a day off and go and read or even just sit. When I'm at gym, I always leave my phone in my gym bag in a locker. But I still feel I waste way too much time and feel I would get bored without my security blanket technology.