Distracting Distractions
Overconsumption, overwhelm, and the quiet rebellion of relearning to simply be.
“Too much, too soon, too fast.” — Massive Attack
There’s no breathing space anymore. No fresh air. And we’re all gasping. In fact, there’s just no space. We’ve reached and normalised a level of content consumption that feels, frankly, absurd. Beyond absurd. We live in a time where everything demands our attention, instantly and urgently, yet nothing ever feels complete.
There’s no finish line. No box to tick that says, “That’s it. You’re done now.” Just a constant stream of things to absorb, track, reply to, optimise.
We start the day already feeling behind. And we end it still somehow accountable, owing in lieu to apps, inboxes, group chats, unread, unchecked.
Catching up on social whilst watching TV. Podcasts while cleaning (although, frankly, that’s just good sense). Listening to voicenotes whilst hanging out the washing. Wearables that track steps, sleep, mood, and who knows what else. Audiobooks at 1.5x speed, just to feel like we’ve learned something or ‘read the book’. Texts and emails answered while we’re supposedly ‘winding down’. Bookmarks and saved tabs, how tos and endless bite-sized reels and videos, and, and, and. Every moment is filled with something, anything. Some form of content. Someone else’s voice. Someone else’s thoughts. A stimulation. A dopamine hit.
Some call it multitasking, or ‘making the most of our time’. But what it really feels like is an invasion of space. Mental space. Clarity. A new belief that silence is no longer golden, but just a waste of time. That if your mind isn’t occupied or you’re not being ‘productive’, you must be falling behind. But maybe we weren’t ever meant to be ‘ahead’? Maybe we’re just fucking exhausted. From constantly taking things in, consuming, and never letting anything settle. Never just being. Disconnected and overstimulated at the same time. Overwhelmed, but underwhelmed. Doing everything and anything, but feeling nothing.
It hit me the other day, my phone has become a pacifier. A grown-up dummy I reach for without even thinking. Which is funny, considering I didn’t have a dummy as a child, didn’t even suck my thumb. But here I am now, instinctively soothing myself with a screen. Pick up, scroll, numb, ignore. Repeat
I’m not even doing it for the ‘engaging’ content I’m barely consuming half the time. But whatever it is that I’m doing, it started to feel kind of dangerous. Like parts of my brain are switching off, anaesthetised.
Yet, I continue to fill the space.
Walking to school in the late 90s/early noughties, I’d always have my headphones in, Walkman on loud. But the beauty was that no texts were pinging, no group chats, no WhatsApps, no two ticks to be seen. My Walkman had no other purpose. No pressure to respond. No racing heart at the thought of stuff I’ve dropped the ball on.
I’ve kept a diary since I was twelve (and 3/4 - those old enough to remember Adrian Mole will know), the messy, unfiltered kind. A place where I could say the real things, before I even knew what “processing” actually meant. But lately, even that space feels… edited. No longer writing from the inside out, but from the outside in. My thoughts, once my own, now feel shaped by whatever I’ve scrolled past, listened to, or absorbed that day. It’s no longer a space for truth, but a reflection of everything I’ve consumed, polished, influenced, curated. Writing as if someone else is reading over my shoulder.
Now, I can’t even make a cup of tea without pairing it with something other than a biscuit: catching up on a friends’ four-minute voicenote, writing a list of shit I need to do (or probably don’t, but think I should), scrolling through an endless newsfeed, or the Whatsapp groups (I’ve muted most), I tell myself I’m just catching up, doing my life admin, but what I’m actually doing is making sure there’s no room for anything uncomfortable to get in. Not letting myself find ways to regulate. Just numbing.
Which would be clever if it worked. But it doesn’t. What it does is create an uneasy emotional build-up that has nowhere to go.
I’ve noticed lately how quickly I reach for something, anything, the second I feel even the whisper of discomfort. A phone. A podcast. My Kindle. Friends on Netflix. The weather app. Adding more to-dos on my notes app.
I do a thing, so I don’t have to feel the thing. I do a thing, because that’s how I’ve trained myself to find comfort.
Taking a moment to sit with ‘it’ sounds too simplistic, but whatever the momentary emotion is, be it grief, anger, anxiety, frustration, and everything in between, whatever it is that’s bubbling up that keeps being pushed back down, what I actually need is to take a moment and just be with ‘it’.
We so often sit with (and share) our happiness, elation, and celebrate those fleeting moments of joy. But we’re too quick to dismiss the uncomfortable and painful ones because, well, exactly that. But to sit means to acknowledge. To sit means to be. And maybe even allow the space to accept eventually. Yet we live in a world that makes sitting with ourselves feel like laziness. As if being still is time wasted. As if boredom is a personal failure.
But sometimes the most radical thing you can do is just... pause.
Not to optimise it. Not to label it as rest. But simply to be with whatever shows up when the noise fades.
So, this is where I am at the moment, relearning ways, rewiring, working on being more aware of how much I add in, how much I tune out to tune back in.
Because I don’t want to live at full volume all the time, I don’t want to always be found or be productive. When did being productive become our only currency? Our validation? If we’re not ticking something off a list, learning something, or improving something, or all at the same time, we act like we’ve failed the day.
It’s as if rest only counts if we can rebrand it as recovery. If it is that radical thing. Everything has to lead somewhere, or it’s deemed pointless.
But what if the point is just… peace, or better yet, a regulated nervous system that society can’t monetise? I don’t want to consume so much that I forget how to feel. And I definitely want to find a way to get to the end of the day and be so busy doing (stuff that gets me nowhere), that I never gave myself the chance to simply be. As my husband always tells me, “Just stop, slow down, and just f*$%king be, Mrs B.”
Because maybe, on some days, on most days, that’s more than enough.
Ciara x