My open tab
It’s all a little too much right now. I open Facebook or the news or whatever and the headlines are blaring. Everything seems desperately important right now — politics, climate, Syria, $50 leather moccasins today only, civil rights, women’s rights, one friend’s biopsy, another’s new baby, some innovative new way to buy soap, a petition that must be signed today, Elizabeth Warren said such and such, Trump did what?! read this, do that, another bomb, another shooting, and on it goes. A horrible jumble of nowness that I can’t do a damn thing about except skim-read, freak out, like, share, sad face, and skim-read some more.
Social media is often compared to the cigarette break of yesteryear, and I’m starting to think it’s just as unhealthy and addictive. But also satisfying, because I do need a break ,and I do want to keep up with the news of the world, and I do care about how all my friends and relatives are doing. Which is why I keep going back, even though I’m just going to get angry and say something like, “Rick fucking Perry as Energy Secretary are you fucking kidding me?” and shut it down again.
I know I’m not alone in this. I see you all out there doing the exact same thing.
To help pull myself out of this cycle, I’ve created a sort of nicotine patch for my screen. It’s a tab titled DISTRACTION that I keep open in my browser window, a place I can go instead of going there when my mind needs to go somewhere.
There’s nothing amazing on this tab. There are no likes here. There is no news. It’s just a scratch pad, really, a private, quiet, non-performative, open-ended space. I jot down random thoughts, make lists, plot career moves, write out a thoughtful reply to an email–basically do anything other than stare at the screen, consuming more information than I can humanly process.
As with quitting smoking, redirecting my attention requires discipline. But my hope is that by repeatedly nudging my distracted mind towards a single place instead of all over the place I will eventually build these momentary lapses of attention into something that deserves attention. If I do, I’ll probably have to post about it on social media. Hopefully you’ll be too focused on better things to notice.
