Attention is at a Deficit. You know, in a Disordered way…

Daily writing prompt
What app eats up most of your screen time — and do you even feel bad about it?

Here’s the thing: I do not doom scroll.

For real. Perhaps it would be better if I did; I’d spend less time refreshing my email, playing Overwatch, and rereading a single chapter of a work I’ve finished; a single sentence, a single word.

Perhaps it would be better if I spent that time doom scrolling. But I do not. I cannot. Attention is at a deficit, you know, in a disordered way, and I can’t just sit.

Doom scrolling feels like just sitting.

Here are things I used to do that compensated:

  1. Morning pages
  2. Yoga
  3. Running
  4. Meditation

Morning pages I still do sometimes, though not every morning, and every morning is kind of the point. It’s the point where it breaks, and the light gets in, and everything else looks a little more organized and easier. Then yoga would help oodles, if I could only get the time where no babies would climb on me to coincide with time I have energy and am not anxious about not doing the other things on this list.

Running has been impossible for a long time. I think yoga would have to come first. Plus, quitting vaping. I’m not quite there right now.

Meditation.

Meditation feels now like a distant dream, like something I can’t remember how I was able to do so well. And I could do it well, if one can really jump in and judge a meditation. I’d do it laying down, feet up on a couch or a bed, knees bent. I’d slip into this kind of state where I was made of sand, and slowly, I’d let the waves wash my body away until I was just mind. Then, I’d try and get to work on washing that away, too.

I’d come out of it with my face tingling, my soul open and static.

I haven’t done it like that in at least a few months, maybe a year.

Perhaps it’s good I can’t just doom scroll.


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