Owning your attention
There is a big difference between knowing something on the surface and integrating knowledge. This, ironically, was something that I understood but hadn't integrated. Over the last two years I've begun to 'feel' the reality of certain personal truths. The first being that when you control your attention you can frame your life within your context over having everything framed by someone else. If all you do is consume others opinions then they inevitably become yours, or at least they act as a backdrop / background voice that lives rent free in your mind. If you go for a run and feel like you did well but then you hear David Goggins saying that he runs 79 miles before 3 am - that shit impacts you. At times this type of relative framing may be useful but when every action you complete is compared against the world you end up with two things - 1) Disappointment 2) Anxiety.
Again, this is obvious but, at least for me, I've always thought myself to be somewhat immune to these influences - at least to the same extent as they might be impacting others. Pretentious, I know. But, what I've come to realize is that just knowing that media can impact you doesn't prevent it from doing so. The intellectual understanding of the negative doesn't prevent the negative from happening.
The manner in which this manifested ( manifests ) to me is a feeling of both constant grasping and anxiety. The anxiety takes the form of a fear of not doing the perfect thing or defining myself in an 'interesting' way - where 'way' is largely defined by that background voice which is defined by others in the form of the media that I consume. The second facet of the anxiety is more existential. Because that inner voice is defined by a selection bias of shock, fear, outrage, and anger - I have this constant sense of impending disaster that I should be preparing for and if I am not prepared then horrible things will happen.
A few months ago I kind of hit a breaking point. I had this flash of the rest of my life spent in this state of worry and comparison. I envisioned the world & media getting worse and therefore having an even stronger negative impact on me. I realized that I actually had very little control over where my mind went, what it thought, and how it made me feel. I was constantly fighting an uphill battle against the hours I spent dopamine farming Reddit.
Again, we confront the obvious. 'People' have been telling us for years that social media is bad but as a grown-ass-adult I felt that I would be immune. Upon reflection of why I am never satisfied despite having more than enough to be happy and why I am constantly grasping and anxious despite not needing to be either of those things, I realized that I am not immune and I am drinking constantly from a waterfall of poison that is hijacking my ability to focus.
Well, fuck that. Really seriously fuck right off with that noise. I am angry about this. I am mad at myself for being so ignorant and not seeing the signs and I am mad at the world for caring nothing for mental health, health, happiness, doing good ... the way I see it, a toxic faction of society has hijacked my dopamine and focus that prevents me from being me.
The temptation to become a Luddite or some sort of recluse is strong but I think technology can have a positive position in our lives. We just have to forge the right relationships and look out for the signs of hijacking. Hence this blog. I am trying to shift my media consumption and time allocations away from mindless injection more toward intention and creation. I am going to write, read, learn, run, and be bored to the point that I regain control.
This is my attempt at owning my attention again. No algorithms, no comparison, no rush. Just deliberate practice and the space to be bored enough to think clearly.