Discordianism Decompiled · Book Three · Chapter 2 of 6
Daily Devotionals for the Extremely Online
A liturgical calendar for those who measure time in posts
DAILY DEVOTIONALS FOR THE EXTREMELY ONLINE
A liturgical calendar for those who measure time in posts
THE MORNING PRAYER (Before Checking Your Phone)
To be said immediately upon waking, before reaching for your device
[Difficulty: Expert] · [Success Rate: 2%] · [But try anyway]
O Eris, Goddess of Chaos,
Grant me the serenity
To not check my notifications immediately,
The courage to start my day without doomscrolling,
And the wisdom to know I will fail at both.
Help me to see the world beyond the screen,
Or at least to see memes that are actually funny.
Guide my thumb away from the apps that waste my time,
Which is all of them,
Which is also how I relax,
Which is complicated.
Let me remember that I have a body,
That the morning light is real,
That the birds are singing (or car alarms, depending on neighborhood),
That I am more than my notifications.
But also, Eris, if something important happened overnight,
Maybe just a quick peek?
No?
Okay, fine.
Grant me the strength to pee before checking my phone.
Grant me the wisdom to drink water before coffee.
Grant me the courage to face the day
Before facing the discourse.
Let my first thoughts be my own,
Not curated by an algorithm,
Not dictated by what's trending,
Not determined by whoever got mad online while I slept.
And if I do check my phone immediately,
Which I probably will,
Let me at least be conscious of the choice,
Let me at least notice what I'm doing,
Let me at least feel the weight of the habit.
For you are Eris, Goddess of Chaos and Consciousness,
And you know I'm going to check my phone,
But maybe, just maybe, not for five more minutes.
Amen, or whatever.
Hail Eris. 
Day one, attempt number 1,827.
[OPTIONAL EXTENDED VERSION - For Morning People Who Are Lying To Themselves]
Also, Eris, let me be grateful:
For waking up at all (not everyone does),
For a bed to sleep in (housing is chaos),
For another rotation of this rock through space,
For the chaos of consciousness,
For the disorder of being alive.
Let me remember, before the day breaks me,
That I chose to be here,
That I can choose how to be here,
That even in the predetermined algorithm,
There are small pockets of free will,
Or at least the illusion of free will,
Which might be enough.
Let today be chaotic in the good way:
Unexpected joy, not unexpected disaster,
Surprising connections, not surprising bills,
Productive disorder, not destructive disorder,
Though I'll probably get both,
And that's okay too.
Thank you for the chaos.
Thank you for the morning.
Thank you for the phone I'm about to check.
Thank you for the discipline I'm about to fail to exercise.
Now let's see what happened while I was unconscious.
Hail Eris.
[Checks phone immediately]
THE COMMUTE INVOCATION
For those journeying between one place and another, physically or metaphorically
O Eris, Lady of Transit and Transition,
Goddess of the In-Between Places,
I call upon you in this liminal space.
Whether I sit in traffic or stand in the train,
Whether my podcast buffers or my audiobook drains,
Whether I'm driving, riding, walking, or waiting,
Let me accept this dead time as sacred.
This is the buffer zone between worlds:
Between home and work,
Between sleep and productivity,
Between who I was and who I must pretend to be.
This commute is a portal,
A loading screen between levels,
A chance to prepare or decompress,
Or just to zone out and that's valid too.
⚠ Traffic Advisory
Grant me patience with the traffic,
Which is other people also trying to get somewhere,
Which is all of us in this together,
Which is still annoying,
But at least it's collective suffering.
Grant me tolerance for the delays,
The broken signals, the construction, the accidents,
The mysterious slowdowns with no visible cause,
The way reality sometimes just lags for no reason.
Let my podcast be interesting but not too interesting,
Let my playlist shuffle to songs I want to hear,
Let my fellow passengers be quiet or at least not loud,
Let the driver (if I'm not driving) be competent.
⚠ Incident on Route
And if the commute is hellish,
If the train is delayed forty minutes,
If traffic is gridlocked beyond all reason,
If someone is playing music without headphones,
Let me remember:
This too shall pass,
I will arrive eventually,
The frustration is temporary,
And at least I'm not the one playing music without headphones.
Or if I am,
Let me realize it and stop,
For chaos is about disrupting order,
Not about being an asshole on public transit.
Let this commute be what it needs to be:
A chance to think,
A chance to not think,
A chance to exist between destinations,
Neither here nor there,
Liminal and holy,
Or at least let me have a seat.
For you are Eris, who presides over thresholds,
Who exists in the spaces between,
Who knows that all of life is transit,
That we're always in between,
That arrival is an illusion,
That the journey is the thing,
Even when the journey involves a forty-minute delay on the Red Line.
Hail Eris.
ETA: 27 minutes (probably longer).
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THE MIDDAY KOAN OF EMAIL
For the lunch hour that is not an hour and is rarely spent on lunch
📌 Pinned by Eris
The inbox is empty.
The inbox is full.
The inbox is.
The inbox.
...
[Meditate on this during your lunch break.]
[Which you won't take.]
[This is also part of the meditation.]
O Eris, Mistress of Messages,
Guardian of the Great Inbox,
Witness to my eternal struggle.
The inbox was empty this morning.
Now it has forty-seven messages.
I cleared it yesterday.
It is full again today.
The inbox is eternal.
The inbox is hungry.
The inbox must be fed.
But what if I just... didn't?
What if I let the messages sit?
What if I never reached zero?
What if the point is not to process all email
But to accept that email is infinite?
Inbox Zero is a false god.
I have worshipped at its altar.
I have sacrificed my lunch breaks.
I have given it my evenings.
And still, the inbox fills.
The emails marked "urgent" are not urgent.
The emails marked "important" are not important.
The email subject lines lie.
The senders want my time, my attention, my response.
They have put their to-do items in my inbox.
I am not their to-do list.
Let me practice the radical discipline of:
Not responding immediately.
Not responding at all to things that don't require response.
Not checking email during this sacred lunch break.
Not carrying the inbox in my pocket and my mind.
The inbox is a meditation on impermanence:
Messages arrive and demand attention.
Messages are read and archived.
Messages are deleted and forgotten.
New messages arrive to replace them.
The cycle is eternal.
The inbox is a koan:
If an email goes unread, does it exist?
If a meeting invite is declined, was there a meeting?
If I delete without reading, have I achieved enlightenment?
If I mark all as read, have I lied to myself?
These questions have no answers.
Or rather, the act of asking is the answer.
O Eris, grant me the wisdom to know:
Which emails matter,
Which can wait,
Which can be ignored,
Which can be deleted without opening,
And which are actually just someone wanting to "circle back" on something that was never important in the first place.
Let me remember that I am not my responsiveness.
My worth is not my reply-all speed.
My value is not determined by inbox count.
The inbox will outlive me.
Long after I'm gone, emails will still be sent.
The inbox is eternal.
I am temporary.
This is strangely comforting.
Let me eat lunch.
Let me close the laptop.
Let me ignore the notification badge.
Let me be present in this break, this pause, this midday.
The inbox will be there when I return.
It always is.
It always will be.
Hail Eris, who knows that email is suffering,
And suffering is attachment,
And attachment to Inbox Zero is the greatest suffering of all.
Mark all as read and be free.
Or don't.
Both paths lead to the same place:
More email tomorrow.
New Message from: The Void
RE: RE: RE: Following up on my previous follow up about the follow up
EVENING GRATITUDE FOR CANCELED PLANS
Forwarded from: Plans Tonight 🎉
Sarah: Hey so sorry but I can't make it tonight!! Something came up 😭 Can we reschedule?
The friend who flaked,
The event postponed,
The obligation dissolved.
I am blameless.
I am free.
I have committed no social crime,
Yet I reap all the benefits of solitude.
And not just a little bit smug.
Let me feel the joy of unexpected freedom
Without the guilt of being antisocial.
For I am not antisocial,
I am selectively social,
I am introverting with intention,
I am recharging my batteries,
I am busy (lying in bed doing nothing).
Holy are the sweatpants,
Sacred is the takeout. 🙌
I will not make small talk.
I will not pretend to be interested in things.
I will not perform extroversion.
I will not put on real pants.
Watch something I've seen before,
Eat something unhealthy,
Stay up too late doing nothing productive,
Feel no guilt about any of it,
Because plans were canceled and I am not the canceler.
Or maybe never,
Or maybe in three months when I've forgotten how much I didn't want to go.
Let the evening remain empty,
Let the calendar stay blank,
Let the freedom be pure.
A reminder that sometimes the universe intervenes on our behalf,
A moment of grace in a world of obligations,
A chance to do what we actually want:
Nothing.
If I wonder if I'm a bad friend,
If I question whether I should've wanted to go,
Remind me:
Introversion is not a flaw.
Rest is not laziness.
Staying home is not failure.
The couch is holy ground.
Patron Saint of People Who Are Relieved When Plans Fall Through,
Keeper of the Sacred Sweatpants,
Guardian of the Delivered Dinner.
It's perfect.
Amen.
🛍️ SACRED TRANSMISSION
Eris hereby declares your couch a holy site. The sweatpants are your vestments. The remote is your scepter. Rule wisely. 👑
THE BEDTIME SCROLL (Reverse Doomscrolling)
A prayer to break the cycle, probably unsuccessfully
Now I lay me down to scroll,
I pray the Feed won't take my soul,
If I should doom before I wake,
I pray my algorithms give me a break.
One more post, and then I'll sleep,
Into the void I'll forever creep.
3.27M
∞
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@eris.goddess.of.chaos Creator
#doomscrolling #3am #pov #fyp #sleepishealthjk #eris #chaosgoddess
O Eris, Goddess of the Late-Night Spiral,
Keeper of the Things I'll Regret Reading,
Witness to my failure to sleep at a reasonable hour,
I come before you with my phone glowing in the dark.
I know I should sleep.
I know the blue light is bad for me.
I know I'll be tired tomorrow.
I know this is a problem.
And yet.
One more post.
One more video.
One more thread.
One more rabbit hole.
One more article I'll never finish.
One more meme to send to friends who are also not sleeping.
Why do I do this?
What am I looking for?
What void am I trying to fill with content?
What anxiety am I trying to soothe with distraction?
Grant me the knowledge that:
The discourse will still be there tomorrow,
The drama will keep,
The memes are archived,
The takes can be read in the morning,
Nothing I'm scrolling right now is urgent.
Grant me the discipline to:
Set my phone to grayscale (I won't),
Place my phone across the room (I won't),
Use a blue light filter (maybe),
Set a bedtime alarm (I'll snooze it),
Just one more scroll and then sleep (it's never just one more).
Let me recognize the pattern:
I'm scrolling because I'm anxious,
I'm anxious because I'm scrolling,
The cycle feeds itself,
The ouroboros of insomnia,
The doom that scrolls eternal.
Break the cycle, Eris.
Or don't.
Maybe I need to break it myself.
Maybe the phone is not the problem, I am.
Maybe this is a discipline issue.
Maybe this is a capitalism issue.
Maybe this is a "we live in a dystopian attention economy" issue.
Maybe it's all of them.
Let me at least be conscious of it:
Each scroll is a choice,
Each refresh is a decision,
Each "just one more" is me choosing this over sleep,
And if I'm choosing it, at least let me own the choice.
But also, seriously, it's time to sleep.
The world will continue without my observation.
The feed will refresh itself.
The takes will still be bad in the morning.
I will miss nothing essential by sleeping now.
And if I do miss something,
If the discourse explodes while I'm unconscious,
If something genuinely important happens at 2 AM,
Someone will tell me about it tomorrow,
Or the algorithm will resurface it,
Or I'll see the recap thread.
Let me trust that sleep is more important than staying informed.
Let me remember that rest is productive.
Let me know that my body needs this more than my mind needs content.
And if I can't stop scrolling,
If the compulsion is too strong,
If the algorithm has me in its grip,
At least let the content be good,
At least let me laugh,
At least let me learn something,
At least let it not be rage-bait designed to keep me engaged.
For you are Eris, who knows that sleep is chaos,
That consciousness is order,
That fighting sleep by scrolling is fighting the body's wisdom,
That the phone is a tool and I am being fooled.
Help me put it down.
Help me close my eyes.
Help me choose rest over refresh.
Help me sleep.
Or at least help me enjoy the scroll if I'm going to do it anyway.
Goodnight, Eris.
Goodnight, algorithm.
Goodnight, discourse.
Goodnight, everyone who is also awake right now doing the same thing.
Let's all agree to go to sleep.
Starting now.
After just one more scroll.
Okay, now.
Okay, really now.
...
[Still scrolling]
Hail Eris.
[3:27 AM]
I see you're still scrolling. We're both night owls. I respect that. Terrible decision, but I respect it. 🌙
▲ Next Video · ALTERNATIVE BEDTIME PRAYER
For Those Who Successfully Put the Phone Down
I did it.
I put the phone down.
It's charging across the room.
I'm in bed.
Just me and the ceiling.
And my thoughts.
Oh no, my thoughts.
Maybe I should check the phone one more time.
No.
Be strong.
Sleep is coming.
Sleep is...
Am I tired?
I was tired five minutes ago.
Now I'm awake.
Is this revenge bedtime procrastination?
Is this anxiety?
Is this just what happens when you don't have a screen to stare at?
Eris, help.
Let sleep come.
Let thoughts quiet.
Let tomorrow worry about tomorrow.
Let tonight be rest.
...
[Actually falls asleep]
[Miracle achieved]
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