The Siren's Song of the Screen
I've spent too much of the past week looking at a small screen in my hand - again.
I'm sure literally every person on earth is extremely shocked by this revelation, and is preparing pitchforks and torches to chase me out of society so they can go back to their screen-less utopia.
I am, of course, joking.
Still, even though I try to minimize the time I spend wasting away (side note: Is it still a new year's resolution if I started it in mid-december?), these black boxes have a way of pulling me back in, no matter how hard I try to avoid it. There is only one moment of weakness needed, and boom - you're right back scrolling through posts that do not matter or watching videos from people you don't know about topics you don't really care about.
I mean honestly, think about this in hindsight: What percentage of the content you've consumed today would you be sad to have missed? How many of the posts and videos you watched do you really care about? How many do you even remember?
It sure as hell sounds like addiction to me, and I do not know how to feel about that. Addictions are interesting in that they only happen to other people. I (and you probably as well) am strong and self-aware. I would never fall into the trap of addiction. Sure, I'm on my phone a lot, but that's because I choose to spend my time like that. If I really wanted, I could do something else entirely with my time. I just want to scroll for a few minutes to spend the time - wait, what do you mean it's been four hours already?
Yes, I could get some sort of dumb phone and go back to an easier time, but I think that this is treating symptoms more than anything else. It would stop me from wasting away on my phone on the toilet or in the short few minutes of waiting throughout the day, but it won't address the bigger issue. Not having a small black screen singing a siren's call in my pocket will not make me read more again, or finally start to draw or make some music. Instead I will just migrate to a bigger screen's siren song and waste away in front of desktop Youtube and video games instead of social media. And as long as I am in a line of work (and interested in hobbies) where a screen is a definite requirement, yeeting the sirens' calls out of my life is not something I can do.
WHich raises the question of what to do about this. How to deal with the days where the sirens win, and how to stop one false step from becoming a downward spiral back into the old habits of wasting away?
I don't think avoiding the sirens entirely is the answer. There are way too many out there nowadays, and some of them live on or close to islands that are actually worth going to - either because they actively make life easier nowadays, or because they provide high-quality distractions and/or information.
No, I think the best choice is found in the source of this already incredibly stretched metaphor: You will never be able to avoid the sirens, but you can take precautions against them.
Find out which sirens you're the most susceptible to, and chart a course that limits your exposure to them - uninstall apps, set timers, that sort of thing.
If you want to indulge their songs, tie yourself to the mast to stop yourself from plunging into the depth - set yourself a counter-program (sports, a smaller creative project) at a strict point in time, and force yourself (or ask someone you know to push you) into actually doing this program at the set point in time. Add stakes, depending on what hurts you the most (donating a set amount of money, eating something you don't really like), if you find that forcing yourself is not enough.
I've been in my current hole for the last three-to-four days, although it's been slowly creeping up on me the entire last week. This post is part of my way out of it again. I already didn't write something last week - I wanted this to be a somewhat weekly thing without explicitly thinking of it like that - and this right now is the fourth time I tried actually writing this exact post since yesterday. All the other times I stood up again without even opening the program, or didn't even get as far as sitting down.
This is the mental half of getting out of this hole. Tomorrow will be the physical part, because I originally planned to go to the gym on Friday and then never did it. I don't think I will go hard and punish myself (that's probably counter-productive), but I very much plan to go and at least do something.
There is no guarantee that this will work, but doing nothing also won't help me resist the siren's call of my screen. At least I've done something today to work on getting me out of here and on track again. That is a mental victory I can claim and it will help me find my way out. I already know that I will fail again in the not-too distant future, but failure is not defeat - not as long as I am aware of what's going on and making an effort to resist it.
These screens may have a siren's call, but in a way they're also a boulder that I constantly need to push forward to get anywhere. It is inevitable that the boulder will roll down again, but if I'm clever, I'll have found a more level part of the mountain by that point. That way, if when I lose my grip again, at least it will roll downhill slower.
Man, these old greek stories really still have a lot of relevance today as metaphors for human existence. Or maybe I'm just tired and have spent too much of my time today listening to the sirens.
I wonder if there's more greek stories that could be applied in this way to our current social structures. There's probably a multi-hour video essay from a channel I've never heard about on that. My screen whispers in my ear that I should go and find it ...