This Is My Brain
I am a man with ambitions. I have many things in my life I want to accomplish and it takes a lot of time and effort to do those things.
The issue is that my brain doesn't want to do those things.
y r u lyk dis
My brain hasn’t always not wanted to do the the things I would like it to. There used to be plenty of room in there for both goofing off and creativity, but now getting my brain to make room for creativity is like trying to shove a cow into a thimble.
You see, as I sat down to begin my daily writing session today, I found it extremely difficult to pull my mind away from what it really wanted to do: jump on Halo Infinite and bash some fools with grav hammers. In 2021, I encountered a similar issue when I got deep into the Total War series of strategy games. I could hardly tear myself away from them. I found my writing time suffered because instead of focusing on my writing, I was always thinking about the game I wanted to be playing instead.
Things are definitely not as bad as they were last summer. But what I'm getting at here is this: I don't like how my brain is being hijacked. I don't like not being in control of where I put my attention. I would like to be more present. You know, actually live that zen meditation I've been doing. Which has been going poorly. For years. Most days I sit on my widdle zen cushion and think about completely random bullshit for twenty minutes and then I call it done. I didn't always used to be this bad at it. When did I get this bad? Why the hell can't I control my own mind?
Why can’t I control my own mind?
I find myself asking this question a lot because my mind sure has me do a lot of stuff that I know isn't great for me. It's not making me an alcoholic or anything like that, but my mind is extremely effort-averse these days. Even when I am putting a lot of effort into something, like going for a run, my brain wants to do anything but be in the moment. I think about the most inane shit on my runs, just like I think about the most inane shit during my meditation.
It'd be one thing if these were creative daydreams of the sort I used to have a lot of when I was younger. I would actually welcome it if my brain were getting carried off on daydreams. No, instead what I get is a stream of gibberish that I'd like to repeat back to you, but it's so nonsensical and simply there to make noise and distract me from reality that I can't even begin to give you a decent approximation of what it's like in my brain a lot of the time other than: “BLAH BLAH BLAH YAMMER YAMMER JABBER JABBER GOBBLE GOBBLE BLAH-DE-BLAH.”
Point is, I feel a lack of control over my own mind. I know to some degree, the mind is never mine to control, but I should be able to at least work with it a bit more, nudge it in the directions I want, let the distractions float by. But nooooOOOOOoooooo…
My brain has convinced me that I'd rather be overwhelmed with constant mental noise than ever experience the excruciating silence and effort of the task at hand. Does doing chores really hurt so much that I need to have my mind wandering off and distracting me from the repetitive motion of the vacuum cleaner?
No! Of course it doesn't hurt to actually pay attention! If anything, paying close attention to each task is deeply rewarding, even the most menial ones. But my mind is hooked on a bad habit and gets sent into a panic every time I try and get it to shut up and give what's in front of me my full attention. My mind cries out in pain from anticipating of the sheer amount of effort it's going to take to pay attention, throws a toddler hissy-fit over having to actually experience sensations as they are and not filtered between the wall of white noise gibberish it conjures up.
I gotta come up with solutions
I can get my brain to shut up every now and then, but it's difficult, unreliable to pull off, and tends not to last very long. Reminding myself to breathe deeply is good, but when I'm real caught up in the noise of my brain, it's never going to break through the noise that I should do that. Same with paying close attention to what I can touch. It’s is a helpful tactic, but if I can't remember to do it because the instinct is drowned out with noise, then what the hell am I doing? Nothing much, that’s what.
I can’t trust myself, I’ve got to have something external helping me. Here’s what I’m going to do:
I’m going to continue meditating. That’s a non-negotiable. I’ll experiment with guided meditation again, since sitting down with just myself isn’t working out.
I’m going to set up a system of phone reminders that tell me to do things like breathe deep or pay attention to physical sensations. I tried this once before and hated it, but maybe I can set it up in a way that will bother me less.
An avenue I haven’t explored yet is the idea that in order to replace a bad habit, I must first understand the purpose the habit serves. Once I do that, I need figure out a new habit that replaces the old one, but achieves the same purpose in a healthier way.
I’ll report back next month. If anyone else has tips on reminding oneself to be present, I’d love to hear them!