Life's Distractions

Time for another brain dump inspired by Rupi Kaur's Writing Prompts for Balance.

Today's prompt:

"The biggest distractions in my life are . I would rather use this time to .

The simple answer? That. Damn. Phone. It's by far the biggest distraction in my life. In fact, I was literally JUST ON IT, mindlessly scrolling before I had to physically make myself turn it off to focus on my writing.

It's the best and the absolute worst. I've expressed my opinions on screen time a ton, both in my blog posts and on my social media. But I'm not perfect. I still occasionally doom scroll. I check my phone in the morning when I know I shouldn't and inadvertently waste 20 minutes of my very precious time. I post something on my TikTok, then overload my brain with tiny dopamine hits while I wait for the post to upload.

I am the biggest hater of modern-day technology, but I'm also a hypocrite. I can't live my life without it at this point! Well, I can, but I won't. I use my phone for EVERYTHING. Work, paying 80% of my bills, ordering my groceries, cyberstalking the people I went to high school with. (That last one is a joke... kind of...).

The smartphone changed how we live our lives. Some changes have been good, but most have been bad. Now, we are more distracted, more dissatisfied, and more disconnected than ever before. So what do we do to deal with these issues? We drink, we do drugs, we do anything to feel better faster and we ignore the long-term effects. We don't allow ourselves to be bored. We never take time to inspect our souls and our dreams and aspirations. We stay distracted because it's cozy and familiar. We rot away wrapped up in a blanket under the tinted blue light of the ever-present screen. That's NOT the existence we were created for.

We were given the capacity to dream. To think freely, to feel deeply, and to make the most of this single life that we have. When we live behind screens, we pollute the way we see the world. We believe the lives we are watching other people live will be enough to satisfy us, but really they just make us less content with our own. What gets dumped onto our For You Page becomes the source of our anger, fear, anxiety, envy, and lust. It's seriously like a gateway drug.

In my opinion, one of the main reasons smartphones have affected us so acutely is that they instantly connect us to anything and anyone and everything. We see and know WAY TOO MUCH information and then we never actually have the capacity to do anything with it. In 1 scrolling session, you could see 500 pictures and videos, but could you tell me about more that 10 of them? Even 5? It's too much.

Everything we see is designed to elicit an emotional response, either positive or negative. Every scroll highjacks our emotions and dictates our behavior. It's too much.

We are all so painfully aware of the evil that runs rampant in the world and yet we feel powerless to do anything about it. And the evil thrives in this environment where literally anything you want could be yours at the touch of a few buttons. It's too much.

It's all just too much. We were made to do more than scroll and like and comment and share and laugh and cry because the black box in our hand told us we should. We were made for more than life in the passenger seat with an algorithm behind the wheel.

Leading me to the second part of this prompt. Instead of spending copious amounts of time on my phone, I want to spend time doing things that actually fill me up. You know, the things that actually make life worth living? Ever done anything like that? Like...

Follow a dream.

Laugh until you cry.

Find someone to love.

Do something that makes you proud of yourself.

Technological advancements have made life easy, and that's made humanity soft, in a way. Just think about the people that lived 200 years ago. In a lot of ways, we had similar lives and stories. But they didn't have a screen to hide behind at the end of every day. What do you think they did instead? Well, they talked to each other. They improved and evolved. They did hard things. Some because they had to, others because they had nothing better to do.

Hard things build character. And I mean that for real. Pain makes you stronger. Hurt makes you wiser. Life makes you better if you allow it to. But in order to do that, you have to expose yourself to things that make you uncomfortable.

I want to do hard things.

I want to do things that make me smile when my head hits the pillow every night. Things that guarantee I'm not wasting my time. Because if I do those things enough, I KNOW that in 10 years, those hard things will give me a life I never would've been able to live without them.

So instead of pulling out my phone and tuning out everything God has planned for my life, I actually want to live it. Put down the phone and get my hands dirty. I'm going to build the life I want brick by brick instead of feeling jealous of the people I meet through my screen building there's.

I'm going to write a book. I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I'm going to get in the best shape of my life. I'll do a TED Talk one day. Unless those don't exist anymore...

I'm going to do all of this and more. Because I only get ONE LIFE. And if not for me, I'll do it for my children. They deserve to see what a well-lived life can be. And instead of just telling them all the things they need to learn and do to be successful, I'm going to teach them and show them.

Watch me.