009: Picking up the ball

Word count: 392

It has been a long time since writing anything and publishing it. One reason I can choose to deceive myself with is that there is no energy. The context is that I am writing this after scrolling TikTok blindly for the past 2 hours. Is that claim true then?

A response to this realisation can be to be hard on my past self, blaming him for being distracted. But how should I expect an everyday guy to compete with the attention-grabbing techniques of a software engineering team backed by millions of dollars? It is an impossible competition, if the game is played fairly.

How should the game be played then? Move the entire game out to phone use. Throw up barriers to using it, such as charging it away from the workstation, or uninstalling the culprit apps. Anything that increases the energy of engaging in these distractions, make the game fairer for the single user.

We need to stay vigilant against all threats to our attention and energy. Not only do they come from without, in a bid to monetise that attention. Threats come from within as well. Mostly in the form of false missions, leading us toward a cause that doesn’t benefit us in the long run.

I type this after months of not writing, despite a commitment to write twice a week. It is near the halfway point to the year, with little progress to show for it. Half of it could be procrastination, trying to find shortcuts where there are none. Yet it should be asked. ‘what does it look like if it were easy?’

Ideas are being generated every single day, through bouts of creativity and conversations with colleagues and friends. Rarely any of these thoughts make it to the printed page. Is this indicative of a huge waste in energy? If ideas are not used to effect any change in the current reality, what are they good for? The corollary is, knowledge is only useful when it is used to effect change, either in the physical change or in someone’s behaviour.

Hence concluding this adventure here. What use is my writing if it is not used to effect change in either its writer or its readers. One thing is for sure: This is another etch in my digital canvas, the proof of my existence.