blogging as therapy & repairing my attention span
A moment ago, I deleted a post mid-draft because writing led to a personal realization, the content of which I didn't think was of particular value to ~the blogosphere~. I wonder how often this happens with other bloggers. Perhaps it was cowardly of me to delete it.
I have a problem with overthinking, which is usually thinking-about-thinking, which leads to talking about everything in abstract terms and "losing the plot." I often delete "I think" from the beginning of sentences unless those sentences are transmitted by iMessage or Discord, in which cases my friends are subjected to repetitive bullshit.
I've noticed that I am less likely to bullshit when I have a hyperfixation, and those hyperfixations can only be supported when I'm not doomscrolling or otherwise wasting my time on the popular internet. But it's not sustainable to eliminate the popular internet from my life, I need to develop better habits instead.
So to cut down on distractions and "repair my attention span," I'm doing the following on a trial basis:
- No scrolling first thing in the morning. The only things I'm allowed to do on my phone before coffee are turn off my alarm, check text messages, and play Wordle/Connections/Parseword.
- After (or during) coffee, I will write in any of my notebooks. This includes my dream log, personal journal, planner/commonplace book, etc. I've never successfully kept up with "morning pages" (ala Julia Cameron), so I think physically writing anything in general is a fair replacement.
- I'm allowed to check social media/Discord as many times as I'd like (after coffee/writing), but only in 15-20 minute increments.
- If I'm watching anything at home (movies, TV, YouTube), I am only allowed to pause it to respond to text messages, look up something on Letterboxd, or anything else occurring "in real life"/off of my device. (I have a bad habit of pausing something to scroll and then I get lost in the scroll and suddenly a couple hours pass me by.)
We'll see if I can stick to this plan for a week and adjust accordingly if not. I'll post about this again next Thursday. I imagine it will be easier to do once I'm back home (I'm still out of town) and thus much busier etc.