Assessing My Attention
2022 Ahoy!
Attempting to crack the initial “barrier of entry” to practicing writing again has proven difficult in the month-and-change since I finished setting up this personal site. I’ve had a smattering of ideas, but haven’t found it easy to focus-in and put work into any of them. Some writing ideas were about the Monster Hunter games and concepts within them, others were about my livestreaming setup or some utilities I use on Windows to make it more palatable, but I’ve struggled with actually sitting down and working through those ideas in writing.
Throughout this past fall season I’ve come to realize the unhealthy mental relationship I have with computers and the internet. The process of creating this personal site and deciding to do more with my hobbies than just livestreaming out to Twitch has been particularly helpful in pinpointing some ways in which my brain is addicted and inundated by too much noise to generate much signal of its own. My brain is absolutely addicted to internet noise.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that the 25+ hours I spend livestreaming to Twitch each week would be at the forefront of any “internet issues” I might be having, but I haven’t found that to be the case.
The chunk of time each night I spend streaming is some of the day where I feel most engaged and able to focus on a single, clear goal: Learn things about Monster Hunter, gradually showcase different entries in the series, and entertain, host, and interact with other Monster Hunter fans on Twitch. In running a broadcast I end up doing a fair bit of multi-tasking in the moment to keep an eye on the technical aspects of the broadcast, read and interact with the chatroom, and play a video game all simultaneously - but the fact that I’m focused on that singular task of “running a quality livestream” is both rather unique in my day, and where we start to come onto the real problem I have.
The rest of my day rarely asks for the entirety of my focus save for a few key moments. These are times like getting dressed and my short commute to work, some busier periods on-shift where I’m taking cafe orders or making them for a sustained stint, and evenings set aside to spend with my wife Anné - though truthfully even those key times aren’t as focused as they could be.
Outside of those more-demanding pursuits, I find myself a distracted mess. Sitting down to sift through video footage means an instinctual check of the community Discord server to ensure all there is well. Coming back to my PC from a busy stint on the job means catching up on the last 30 minutes of my Twitter timeline. Getting home tired from a day at work means spending an inordinate amount of time finding a suitable YouTube video to rest and eventually fall asleep to. Idle time on days off leads to endless scrolling; searching for the next hit of an interesting topic, good read, hot tech video, or goings-on.
It feels like my brain wants to be at 100%-uptime on “interesting things.” And that’s to say nothing of frustrating or incendiary topics managing to weasel their way into my thoughts well after I’ve stepped away from my machine or put down my phone.
I had a few particularly dark days of mental frenzy which came to such a fever-pitched point of distraction that I “snapped-out” of the thick of it to see just how addled my brain had become. On some occasions it didn’t just occupy my idle time; even with things I needed to do, I’d find myself laying about and just scrolling. Bouncing from one app to another trying to satisfy a dull ache of boredom that never truly abated.
You likely get the point, things have been mentally dire. At first just beginning to pay attention and notice all the ways my brain had picked up unhealthy habits was a painful process. Digital haunts I’d gone to for years for bits of entertainment, learning, or community were laid bare as having a hand in my inability to focus.
Since those initial realizations I’ve taken some time away from the offending sites cold-turkey, audited my lists of follows and subscriptions to have less “noise” to draw me in, removed the offending apps from my homescreen or pinned browser tabs, and its helped me begin to gradually feel better.
Articles about attention - or lack thereof - and addiction have caught my eye as of late, a recent one being How to Make Quitting Your Addiction Easier. In that piece, it talks about the best way to motivate yourself to make a change in habits being to assess and truly rationalize that you don’t want the offending patterns in your life anymore. It’s easy to tell oneself “I’m not allowed to be distracted on YouTube anymore” but just barring the option out with a rule doesn’t really fix the issue, not directly anyhow. If instead I think through how “I don’t want to let my brain fall into the algorithmic trap of searching for that next great video piece anymore - it makes me feel distracted and anxious” then I’m making a real change in how I perceive the time I spend scrolling YouTube, and I’ll be less likely to fall into that pattern again.
So far that’s seemed to be true. The more I pay attention and assess how I feel after having spent time online, the more I’m able to slowly rationalize that these websites aren’t places I want to be as often anymore. It’s scary how well the modern web wordlessly promises that whatever piece of information, communication, or entertainment you’re looking for - it’s just one more refresh, one more scroll away. It makes me look at newer, even more subliminal designs like TikTok and shudder at the uninhibited fire-hose of algorithmic attention-grabbing “content.”
My effort to step away from those dark patterns is still a work in progress - with me having more good days now, but also still lesser ones where I let myself fall into the comfortable rhythm of letting the web keep my brain busy. On the days I don’t though, I’ve found myself a little less anxious, a little more focused and able to sit with my own thoughts, and a little more likely to enjoy the simple pleasures of reading or writing again. It feels good, and I’m hoping it’s just the beginning of a healthier way to enjoy the internet and technology.
In truth I sat down to write this piece with the intention of touching on several other pieces of tech that I got to experience for the first time over the holidays. It’s exciting to have new technologies to learn about and analyze, but I guess the journey of self-assessment I went through to get here the last few months was more important to reflect on - since this is what bubbled up into my markdown editor.
I’m hopeful that in 2022 I’ll continue working on being more thoughtful and intentional with how I allow my brain and attention to be. It’s felt like coming out of an odd haze, and the clarity has been delicious.
Cheers,
~Mike