Reflection #15: self-soothing
on the working day, passions and procrastination
My eyes are burning and I feel sick.
I am pissed with myself: I have just spent one hour scrolling through YouTube shorts and I am bitter about every laugh I have given an algorithm that knows my fears better than it knows my interests.
It is not the first time this has happened since I’ve first planned out this essay. For the past few weeks, staring at the blank page in front of me, I have convinced myself that I am not to blame, because this is exactly what advertisers want and what they have spent their money on, keeping us hooked and numb in front of our screens.
Indeed, originally, this was going to be an essay about self-soothing under capitalism: we use social media to feel our emotions for us, a Silicon Valley funded version of a cigarette drag.
The content is never ending, familiar yet always new, beating hearts popping up wanting to be chased. After (or during) a long day at the making-money-for-the-bosses factory, I feel no desire to think, to create. My energy has to be saved to keep me productive from the moment I clock in to the moment I clock out, the 8 hours counted by HR the only proof that I am living. Should anyone ask us to describe the fruits of the labour we’ll be doing until our graves, we’d have to point to the shareholder’s pockets and beg that their wealth is a good enough reflection of the effort we put in.
Perhaps this is why “bed-rotting” has become so common amongst people my age and those who are even younger - the new workforce, burned out by the truths of their life under post-capitalism before the first contract was ever signed. A hobby to many, passively scrolling whatever social media feed has become the only defense against the unfairness of our economic systems and any other difficulty life may be throwing at us.
How could one feel stressed about the days ahead when the memes are memeing.
Me? I have always been known to prioritise the promise of a clear mind, especially a mind that is so obsessive. And what is the algorithm, like a smoke, like a drink too many, if not the unfailing certainty that my mind will be empty but content?
Sure, I feel ashamed of all of these self-destructive coping mechanism: thirty minutes of scrolling leave me as breathless as 10 Camel Blue smoked one after the other to impress a boy; head as sore as three of my favourite drinks gone way too quickly; aftertaste as dissonant as crisps eaten after chocolates eaten after pistachios eaten after bread. But I can’t help myself: even as I am thinking “ok, close the app and move onto your actual hobbies”, most days I numbly keep scrolling until an app I pay for tells me I have succeeded my daily limit.
Because it happens so often, I have had many nights to worry about this phone addiction and how it fits into my life.
I have had to look beyond blaming the phone and interrogate myself as to what makes this inaction so attractive to me and other people like me.
The algorithms, the apps, are just the socially acceptable way for me to ignore how much I am afraid of my passions and failing at them. Take for example writing: when I am at work, driving home, I can only think about how excited I am to come home and turn on my laptop and open my docs and pour my brains out until I am satisfied and all of my thoughts make sense. Yet, I very rarely actually sit down and do anything that isn’t waiting for the day to end, phone in hand.
The more excited I am for a writing project, the least likely I am to actually write it.
Perfectionism and poor confidence in myself have everything to do with it. It is better to deal with the disappointment of another writingless day than the realisation that I will never be as good as I’d like to be. Comparison with the idea I have in my brain of a “good piece of writing” is the thief of joy, it’s the thief of creativity. Social media is a mere accomplice - maybe a highly involved one, but an accomplice nevertheless. It’s been taking me months to finish this post, the more I put it off the more daunting it becomes. My phone, like a slice of cake on a bad rainy day, allows me to not feel powerless and upset, it allows me to have a laugh without thinking about what I am missing out on. And it is too scary, to abandon the comfort of the endless feed and choose, instead, the unknown possibilities that await me were I to just put pen to paper.
To think of this with some nuance, the truth probably actually lies somewhere in the middle of the “phone is bad” vs. “I am bad” dichotomy. I am always so hyper-aware of each second passing. The tick and tock of the clocks I fill my house with dictates a severe regimen that urges me to enjoy my time outside of the office hours. My weekends are sacred, my evenings should be moments of self-growth and enjoyment. Obviously, this creates too much pressure for a simple Tuesday evening, and I become overwhelmed and scared, trying to make sure that I am spending my time wisely and efficiently.
What else am I, a serial procrastinator with a penchant for self-pity, to do but convince myself that taking action would be a mistake and that it is simply easier to watch reels until my anxieties have shifted and there’s no more time to do what I wanted to do?
Here I am, at the end of this personal essay and I have to decide if I would have felt better chilling out on the couch. That’s it, maybe, the trap: easy things are always more enjoyable, but enjoyable things are not always easy. Writing forces me to face my insecurities, sometimes I am going to lose, but I shall keep trying.