| Many, many people point this out but most of them don't seem to have much insight beyond the symptoms. I've thought about the apparent paradox that I keep distracting myself with a phone/computer while also not getting any fulfillment out of it. Right now I think it is about self-loathing and hating my own company. I hated being undistracted since that meant more attention for my thoughts. Those nagging, awful thoughts. I've also had some experience with meditation. I was never succesful. But I did manage to have the mini-insight that I am not my thoughts. So I didn't pick up meditation again but I did try to carve out some 10 minutes here and there where I just sat with myself, focused on the moment, and didn't look at my phone. I used to get super-annoyed at myself when I did this because my mind would always start to wander. But that mini-insight might have actually had some lasting effect, since now I was able to not get annoyed when I noticed myself -- um, I mean my thoughts -- just blahblahblahing. Because chatty mind is fine as long as you can observe it with detachment. At least at my level. I don't know if it did anything, but it has correlated with a change in attitude towards these distractions. I now have better impulse control, am more optimistic, have more initiative, less irritable. And I have a better attitude and partial control over those nagging thoughts—I can either let them play out in the background or pivot them. Sometime. Total mastery of the chatty mind is a long ways off. So how do I resolve this paradox? Before I hated myself and my mind—which I identified with myself—so much that I instantly reached for distractions whenever nothing was happening. Was past me an idiot for doing that? No. He simply didn't know any better; he was knee-deep in the ramblings of the chatty mind, either reacting to it or arguing with it. Writing periods like this down feels like I am a leaving a note to my future, possibly confused self. From my now-lucid self. |