Attention spans

I don't think social media or the internet are responsible for my skittish attention. It's being a parent. The constant needs of a child interrupt everything. Even though my daughter goes to school, I find myself switching from one thing to another as though she's around. 

The concentration of meditation can help one defrag their brain. Unlimited input, surfing the net, input all the time. I used to be a person who turned off TVs, but now I feel OK with them on all the time. Input input input.

I love taking baths and reading. I'm not going to drag my computer into the bathroom and I don't feel comfortable using my phone in the bath. A book can even be dropped, I've dropped a book into the bath before. You can dry it out, but it expands, so it's pretty much dead unless it's the last book on earth and then you'd preserve it. 

I've seen so much apocalyptic fiction that I imagine things from that perspective, like I can flip with other kinds of perspectives. 

The rampant and copious entertainment has also led to a kind of aesthetic pleasure seeking attitude. In my solitude I see out movies, shows, books, news, sports, it's all attempting to get my attention. What is truly interesting to me. 

I never reread anything or watched something over and over again until maybe a few years ago. I found shows that I liked, and watching them non-stop was what I did until I could find another show that engaged me. The characters are like friends, family. You know how grandpa would tell the same story over and over again. Well, my shows are like grandpa, going over the highlights, comforting and interesting narratives. Interesting narratives now hold up over rewatching. Maybe it's Clive Bell's significant form. At the time I read about significant form, I thought what? But it's the only explanation I can find for why certain shows grab me. 

In a way I don't even pay attention the first time watching a favorite show I'll watch over and over. I play chess or videos games on my phone and mostly listen. In a way the visuals are secondary to the dialogue, though I do look up when I have to. To get facial expressions, to see personnel. I don't really like action, that's boring to me at this point, it all seems so fake. It's visual fluff, so I can take my eyes off the screen.

The full up feeling of both video games and TV in the background is my crack. I resent having to eat, but eating and watching are also linked to me know. We used to watch the news during dinner as a family and my stepfather would rant at the TV. I disliked politics, it's taken me into my 50's to get that it's really frustrating to not get what you want, but that's part of democracy. People cheat and game the system to get around things to power grab, but the shred of democracy really helps, the illusion that you're participating. I vote, and who I vote for doesn't win. That's OK, I'll keep voting and paying attention. The terrible leaders we have is because we don't pay attention. The terrible leadership is fetishized by the abused, and thus the system keeps perpetuating itself. Just having normal human leaders is something a few countries have figured out. I want to move to New Zealand, or Canada. 

I'm really surprised Madison Cawthorn was voted out by his base in republican primaries. I didn't know a republican could do anything too bad, to lose his base. I thought the whole point was to disrupt government and make it not work. Lurid scandals draw attention.  

I'm going to say this too. The legalization of marijuana makes sense because drug use needs to be decriminalized. But it's not a pure win, because it's just been folded into capitalism and numbing oneself down from the capitalist grind. Come home from work exhausted and bewildered, and just lite it up so you can consume the bland entertainment, smoking gives you euphoria and makes things seem profound. They used to say Ambien wasn't habit forming and the ERs are filled with people seeking Ambien. Same with marijuana. It's not physically addictive, like you can die just quitting alcohol, but it's psychologically addictive because who doesn't want more euphoria. The biggest argument for me against smoking is that I couldn't really focus on reading Shakespeare. I'd rather read Shakespeare than smoke.