I decided that my mental health could do with a break from doom-scrolling the US election so this morning rather than fall into my usual routine of checking all the overnight updates and hot takes I deliberately set my Substack cut out that noise. Instead of the usual round of news media sites, I read about twenty of pages of Tom Holland’s Pax - his history of Rome’s Golden Age.
Me, slaying my distraction.
It really smoothed out my mood. It also reminded me just how much of a skill it is being able to focus on a topic for more than a few seconds. Holland is a very good writer, lyrical and clear, which don’t always go together. But my brain is so fucking cooked from continually flicking from one pixelated dopamine hit to the next that I frequently found myself having to slow the fuck down, back up and read whole paragraphs again.
It was a little sobering, to be honest. I like to think of myself as having more focus than most - or at least as having built up some really solid scaffolding around my focus, to keep it on the job. But no. Mine is as degraded as everyone else’s.
So I think for the next few weeks, I might lean into reading history and novels rather than social feeds and the news. See if I can get some of my mental fitness back. And spare myself a bit of anxiety disorder about the end of the world while I’m at it.