hijacked
i got hijacked again. i’ve spent the last week glued to twitter, gorging myself on the firehose of news coming out of ukraine.
it’s wild how news events can take over my attention and emotional life like this.
the most vivid examples were in 2020, with covid and the initial lockdowns. then with the summer of racial strife. then with the election, and january 6th soon thereafter.
with all of these, and currently with ukraine, days and weeks of my life disappear in a flash. i get swept up in a tidal wave of information consumption, and my sense of time gets so warped.
i remember looking at the clock yesterday morning, and thinking, “oh hey, it’s only 11am. i’ve still got most of the day ahead to be productive.” then i went down a twitter wormhole, and when i emerged it was 3:45pm. fuck.
it’s not just my productivity that takes a hit. my health usually tanks along with it. when i’m anxious, food is my trustiest coping mechanism. and not in a healthy way. usually these periods are marked by binges of unhealthy shit. on sunday, after looking up at the clock and realizing i hadn’t eaten all day, i went to mcdonald’s for the first time in years. (it was gross. would not recommend.)
from there, i usually stop going to the gym, my sleep gets out of whack, and my physiology becomes so sluggish that all i have the energy for is more twitter doomscrolling.
it’s a self-defeating feedback loop that i always struggle to break. like, i tried to break free yesterday. and for the first hour of the morning, it felt like i had. but then i got sucked back in.
so that’s my project right now. i need to break out of this.
to that end, i’ve blocked twitter on all my devices for the next two days. the only thing that seems to keep me off the bird app in times like this is brute force.
beyond that, i’m back to focusing on the basics. getting enough sleep, going to the gym, and eating well. i’m not putting pressure on myself to be productive and prolific at work. i know that if i take care of myself, the productivity will come. but if i try to force it, i’ll just end up frustrated.
onwards.