Of late I’ve been struggling with what to write. An idea would grab my attention and sit for a day or two in my head, then suddenly disappear. That’s rarely happened. Til now.
Also, more often than before, I now find myself waiting until the night before my weekly blog deadline, sweating buckets just to squeeze out a measly 300 words of something, anything!
Fortunately, I have been building my “writing muscles” for over seven years now, since I first launched this weekly blog. So the writing “process” is still pretty much baked and ready to serve. Which explains how in all this time, I’ve rarely missed the Saturday deadline I set for myself to publish a blog post.
Yet I can’t help noticing that I’m starting to agonise a little more than usual what to post.
My Writing Attention — Then & Now
Previously my routine was to ideate on Tuesdays, muse and pen down a few lines on Wednesdays, let things simmer a bit on Thursdays, then draft at least half of the piece by the end of Fridays. Come Saturday morning, it’s just a question of finishing my writing and uploading it to my blog before Sunday arrives.
Nowadays, everything I just mentioned has been delayed by a day. Sometimes more! Yet, my deadline is still Saturday. I’m writing this very line you now read with barely 12 hours left to my deadline, and barely 200 words! But what’s a writer like me to do? Life still goes on. Daily household chores, children and various matters need attending to. My busy seasonal teaching work started three weeks ago and will last for at least another three months still. Which means less time for myself.
So writing for me happens these days in dribs and drabs, rather than one or two big blocks of uninterrupted time. That’s luxury I simply don’t have.
But while all the above-mentioned daily distractions contribute to my writing woes, I believe the worst of the lot rests solely on my increasingly addictive habit of endless scrolling!
The Scrolling Is Killing My Attention. And My Writing.
According to the old faithful Wikipedia, endless or infinite or dopamine scrolling is…
“…an approach to web design where new material is continually dynamically added to the bottom of the page as the user scrolls downward, leading to the apparent ability to scroll forever. This is in contrast to pagination, where material is divided into discrete pages.”
These days of course, this form of scrolling is almost exclusively taking place in the palm of our hands, thanks to those “wondrous”, habit-forming apps, nestled snugly inside the smartphones we own.
And when one is looking at pages of depressing stuff continously, that’s termed doomscrolling. How app, I mean apt!
Feels like we’re all doomed, doesn’t it?!
Despite all I’ve read, researched and even reviewed about the dangers of modern technology, and my personal revulsion at them, I find myself nightly behaving like a textbook hypocrite. I’m reaching for my phone beside my pillow, and endlessly scrolling through TikTok, Insta and Facebook reels for over an hour! Towards the end, I’ll plug my ears with my favourite AirPods and fall asleep to the giggles of The Golden Girls (my comfort sitcom since the ’80s).
Did I just publicly confess my sin of letting my focus and attention be stolen from me?! I guess I did. But will it help me avoid it tonight, or the nights yet to come? Sadly, my flesh is weak, and my will even weaker!
Sigh.
Maybe I need to hit rock bottom (assuming this malaise I’m stuck in isn’t a bottomless pit) before I’ll be sufficiently repulsed to put a hard stop and firm end to this ridiculous addictive behaviour.
And I think I’m on the verge of hitting that!
My Writing And Attention Needs A Ruthless Reset!
For some time now I’ve been feeling a part of my brain rotting away like the base of my wooden laundry cabinet (thanks I suspect to a leaking tubing in my washing machine that sits beside it).
That’s the part of my brain that typically has neurons all fired up with ideas and inspired thoughts whenever my writing ideation “appointment” arrives. Before, I would be all excited with not one, not two, but several ideas of what to create or write about. And these ideas typically come when I’m plugged into my surroundings and have paid careful attention to what goes on around me (and in the world) throughout the week.
[Yes. Paying attention in an attention economy. How novel! Oh wait, it’s not even an attention economy anymore. It’s now the affection (or intimacy) economy that’s rocking 2026!]
Nowadays, however, I am feeling less inspired, more impatient, and “dry” when it comes to ideating.
And each time I feel this way, I simultaneously feel a compulsive urge to reach for my phone, like a heroin addict for his fix.
It’s the same when it comes to reading.
After pouring over a couple of pages, be it a print or electronic book, my mind starts to wander and I can’t seem to re-focus with ease like before.
I’m not alone with this lack of focus and urgent desire to reset. A simple online search will throw up way too many netizens’ similar complaints. Also, remedies. The problem with these remedies is that they tend to always talk about replacement activities. Like touching grass, going for a run, picking up non-screen hobbies, throwing oneself into household chores, reading a page or less, than slowly increasing the number of pages.
None dive into the ‘in-between’ moments. The ones just after you’ve scrolled infinitely, and before you try one of these many remedies. Of what use is any remedy if I don’t even know how to get to that pivotal in-between moment that lets me transition out of scrolling and into “screenless-ness”?
How To Transit Out Of Scrolling To Restore My Attention And Writing?
I seriously believe there needs to be research into that sweet spot, that “in-between” moment. The moment that will ease us out of our dopamine scrolling stupor, and over to re-focused attentiveness to ourselves and our environment again.
The problem is, I can’t find any such research. Just a “this-is-the-problem; here’s-the-solution” circus of endless helplessness.
Which is why the heading for this section I’ve crafted ends with a question mark, not a full stop.
And why I can’t write anymore now.
Not until I uncover this “in-between” moment for myself. That will eventually restore my mojo.
My attention.
My writing.
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