Do you throw yourself into stories that have little artistic merit just to pass the time?
Another concrete example of this: fanfiction. Some is good, the rest… well, I once described it to a friend as `giving my brain something to chew on’. Fast-forward button, indeed.
Totally! I was reading some mediocre fanfiction the other day and I had this note of confusion: “why am I reading this? I thought this was pica for something but...the character is bland and unintelligent, the writing is weak and meandering...”
My current model is that what I usually thought of as “escapism” i.e. I want to be elsewhere for a while, is actually “fast-forward” i.e. I want to cease to be for a while.
That resonates much more deeply than wanting to be somewhere else.
The subtle and terrible part is the vicious cycle: the more time I spend opting out of `being’, the more time I have to spend catching up (on homework, social life and skills, fitness, etc.) and that seems daunting, so I turn to escapism again and that spirals on down.
I heard a quote about addiction that I think applies well here:
`Kicking an addiction is harder because of the extra cost it takes. An alcoholic whose drinking is ruining his marriage may choose to keep drinking because it’s easier than fixing the whole problem. Fixing his drinking problem doesn’t fix the emotional distance it put between the spouses.′
This comment (and the whole discussion) really resonated with me. I think a hard part of this is that if I try and totally remove the activities that allow for opting out of being (video games, mindless reddit scrolling etc.), it tends to only work for a short time before I relapse all at once into them. It seems like this is a case where moderation might be the answer for me personally rather than abstinence.
One unexpected positive of Hammertime is that I’ve noticed my desire to play video games gradually decreasing over the last month. This might be an interesting case where the solution to the problem is to solve other life problems, at which point the desire to cease to exist simply fades away.
Yeah, okay, I mulled it over for awhile and ceasing to be is resonating more and more. There was this period in January where I found myself rereading the Redwall books, and there was something sort of warm and nostalgic about it but also they’re just terrible books and at some point I had no idea why I was still reading them as opposed to something else (and at some later point I stopped).
Another concrete example of this: fanfiction. Some is good, the rest… well, I once described it to a friend as `giving my brain something to chew on’. Fast-forward button, indeed.
Totally! I was reading some mediocre fanfiction the other day and I had this note of confusion: “why am I reading this? I thought this was pica for something but...the character is bland and unintelligent, the writing is weak and meandering...”
My current model is that what I usually thought of as “escapism” i.e. I want to be elsewhere for a while, is actually “fast-forward” i.e. I want to cease to be for a while.
That resonates much more deeply than wanting to be somewhere else.
The subtle and terrible part is the vicious cycle: the more time I spend opting out of `being’, the more time I have to spend catching up (on homework, social life and skills, fitness, etc.) and that seems daunting, so I turn to escapism again and that spirals on down.
I heard a quote about addiction that I think applies well here:
`Kicking an addiction is harder because of the extra cost it takes. An alcoholic whose drinking is ruining his marriage may choose to keep drinking because it’s easier than fixing the whole problem. Fixing his drinking problem doesn’t fix the emotional distance it put between the spouses.′
This comment (and the whole discussion) really resonated with me. I think a hard part of this is that if I try and totally remove the activities that allow for opting out of being (video games, mindless reddit scrolling etc.), it tends to only work for a short time before I relapse all at once into them. It seems like this is a case where moderation might be the answer for me personally rather than abstinence.
One unexpected positive of Hammertime is that I’ve noticed my desire to play video games gradually decreasing over the last month. This might be an interesting case where the solution to the problem is to solve other life problems, at which point the desire to cease to exist simply fades away.
Yeah, okay, I mulled it over for awhile and ceasing to be is resonating more and more. There was this period in January where I found myself rereading the Redwall books, and there was something sort of warm and nostalgic about it but also they’re just terrible books and at some point I had no idea why I was still reading them as opposed to something else (and at some later point I stopped).