Struggling for Attention

What are your minutes worth?

When I was younger, I was always a book reader. I was one of those obnoxious people who bragged that I didn’t watch TV. And I didn’t. In my 20s, I would watch The Simpsons and Friends with my sister, but that was it. I knew with my attention issues and anxiety, TV was nothing but a dark hole for me to get drawn into and lost forever. That’s not to say it’s that for everyone. But for me, I could feel myself getting sucked in, so I turned it off.

When I first started dating my husband, I remember being perturbed that he kept the TV on most of the time. Later on, when we were married, I’d be outraged when he brought his laptop to bed at night to read The Huffington Post.

Oh, how the tides have changed. Now, I am the one up at three in the morning, basking in the warm cellphone glow of distraction. I feel like I’m clawing my attention back from the world, and at this point, it is getting desperate.

I started my real foray into the Internet with the now barely used Blogger. Being a Mommy blogger in the early 2000s was fun and small and felt like a community. The Internet and those early days provided so many opportunities for connection. It was exciting, innovative, and genuine. We weren’t inundated with ads or commerce. It was about telling your story and finding your people. Bellowing into the dark recesses of the Internet and coming back with your hands full of humanity. It wasn’t until Instagram that the trouble started.

Instagram. That was really the first social media app that I got hooked on. Initially, it was about photographs, art, creativity, and family. About sharing things with like-minded individuals. You logged on. Saw what your friends were up to, shared some filtered photos, and then logged off. It wasn’t an endless scroll. You saw what was new, and you quickly came to things you’d seen before, and you were done. The end of that innocence was not all Instagram’s fault. It was a perfect storm of many things that all happened simultaneously—the Internet explosion. Smartphones. Social media. Trump. Covid.

Facebook monetized Instagram. Trump took over the entire news cycle. And consuming online media became more of an addiction than a joy. Now, it’s an endless scroll of people you don’t know and crap you don’t care about, a constant narration of buy, buy. buy. Sometimes, I go to find a fish recipe, and an hour later, I’m fully invested in some Cajuns doing a crab boil. I don’t even know what I’m looking at or why. You want to look away but can’t because there’s always a cute cat video to draw you back in. The urge to get outside my head is so constant that I have to actively deny it all day long. I fight it. I see my friends fighting it. I see my son not really fighting it, but I am resigned to the fact that that’s what this generation is. Trump’s online footprint alone—reading about him, listening to him, hearing about him—has stolen a good year of my life for sure.

But here’s the good news. Rather than being angry over the hours/days/years of my life I’ve lost, this year of education is a way for me to claw back my time. I’m reading. Discovering. Finding things out. Drawing. Taking pictures and making things. It’s a daily struggle to keep from going down the drain of distractions, but things that don’t matter have stolen too much of my life already. I can see time closing in around me. The problems that come with aging and taking care of people, future responsibilities, and I know this might be my only shot.

This is not a condemnation of social media or the Internet. Plenty of scientists and social scientists can argue the same thing and better. This is just about me. Wanting my time back. Now that I see how little of it is left, nothing is more important than minutes. I have to always be either consuming something worthwhile or creating something. Even when I watch a movie, I’m usually sewing little felt, beaded hearts to give away. When I give them to a friend, I tell them, “This is 30 minutes of my life.”

I know sometimes my husband gets jealous of the various projects I take on, whether it’s pottery, quilting, or school, but the truth is there are two things that are most important in the world. Taking care of other people and taking care of yourself. And every hour I spend writing, reading, or learning is an hour I’ve invested in myself. Even if it never pays off. Even if the knowledge I am accumulating and the experiences I’ve ever had never do anything more than sit in my brain and fill my soul. Even if I never do anything except be a student for the rest of my life.

With so much happening in the world that’s out of my control, this little bit I can control seems important.