One thing I've kind of noticed about myself lately is my lack of attention span when it comes to much of anything anymore. I'm not sure if this is more of an issue with myself, or my environment, or society as a whole, but I find it harder and harder to really focus on something for a long period of time.
I used to be able to, for example, do those Duolingo courses for like hours on a day where I didn't have work. Hell, I remember back in like 2014 doing the entire Polish course in one weekend because I was able to really tunnel down and focus on it nonstop.
But now, I found the last semester of college a bit more difficult because articles I'd need to read for classes, chapters from textbooks, instructional videos etc...I'd have to chunk up into smaller parts. Read a page or two, stop...come back, read a page or two...stop...come back. And it's weird and kind of disconcerting because I would have been able to tackle those 15-20 page articles, or an entire chapter of a textbook easily. I would have been able to watch an entire hour's worth of a documentary over what we're studying in class in one go. During the last semester? It was hard keeping my attention on it for more than 10 minutes at a time.
So, is this a problem with me? Hell, even now after college, trying to find stuff to do that allows my mind to just focus on one thing is hard. Reading a book? Yeah no. Playing a video game that has a coherent story? Nope. Hell, cleaning my room is difficult unless I break it down to smaller constituent chunks that I complete throughout the day when I feel like it rather than just taking an hour or so to do it all in one shot. Is this stress related? Is this a symptom of or consequence of depression? I don't know. But I wish I could get that attention span back.
Currently, my job (though with luck, not for much longer), has me doing customer service tickets for the most part, with some other clerical/admin type stuff thrown in. Because of this, I constantly have to shift gears from returns, refunds, shipping quotes, tracking lost packages, troubleshooting broken items, sending out new batteries etc etc etc and each ticket is different. I do try to group them together by "subject" so I do a bunch of coupon-discounts in one shot, a bunch of returns in one shot, a bunch of basic troubleshooting in one shot, but because of the speed I go at (and am expected to go at), I find that it bleeds over to where "if I don't finish this ticket in 5 minutes, my boss gets mad at me" with "why is this damn video 25 minutes long? Too long, can't watch." Even when I'm not on the clock, I find my brain still looking for quick and easy tasks or quick and easy dopamine hits.
Now, there is the argument that society as a whole is like this. We've gone from longer forms of entertainment to aforementioned tiny blips of dopamine. How we went from long blog posts (Hi Irony, my name's Kam!) to those Twitter posts of 280 characters max. We went from long videos to Tiktok where it's like 10-30 seconds. How do you expect people to keep their attention on something for a decent amount of time when everything is structured internet-wise to be short, direct, to the point, boom done? Then, add to that, the inabilty to unplug yourself. The inability to step away from stuff and just....be. Like work for example. My work stresses me the hell out. And because of this, even when I clock off, I'm still stressing about work, still dreading work, still not wanting to go into work the next day etc. There's no ability to not have work on my mind. And that sucks. Same deal, with social media and the internet, you're always connected. You (the general you, not you in particular, mind) are always connected via your laptop, tablet, phone to your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, YouTube etc etc etc..you got a constant stream of the entire world in your face all the time. All the horrible stuff going on in the world, all the drama between your friends and randos you've never met, all the friction within your favorite fandoms, all the trending topics du jour that come and go and come and go and come and go, and the fact that....you're not competing on a level playing field.
So what do I mean about a level playing field? So, before the rise of the internet and the rise of social media and the rise of anyone in the world being able to broadcast themselves to anyone in the world...if you had a hobby, or a skill....you basically were just competing against your group of friends, right? If that's even a competition. You want to learn to play guitar? Go ahead, pick up the guitar, learn a few chords, fumble your way through Stairway to Heaven and Wonderwall, maybe try writing a punk rock song or two...and hey, you can play the guitar! YAY! Now? Pick up the guitar, fumble around with it, learn your way around it and then watch some kid who's 6 from Poland or somewhere completely shred like Ronnie James Dio...and you can't compete with that so....no guitar, right? Pick up another hobby, say cooking. (I LOVE COOKING) so yeah, find a dish you love, find a recipe, learn some basic knife skills, figure out how to boil, bake, steam, fry....and make your dish. Make another one. Make another one. It's tasty right? You make some damn good chili/banana bread/pork chops/fried chicken, huh? Well, yeah. But here comes the internet again...with their picture perfect 5-star chef level, Instagrammable food. Can you compete with that? Nope....so no cooking for you, huh?
And I think that's another issue coming back to me with my lack of attention nowadays...is the inability to suck at something until I suck less at it. With everyone competing against the literal gods of (thing) at all times...picking up a new skill and being like that old Internet meme of the dog in front of a computer going "I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING" and being okay with it because nobody does when they start...is now...somehow forbidden. You're expected to "git gud n00b" at every impasse, but like...how do you "git gud" when you're not given the chance to actually learn, figure out mistakes, try again? It's like "entry level" jobs that require 3+ years experience. How do you get experience? Get a job. How do you get a job? Have experience.
So anyway....sorry for the kind of tangent there, but yeah, long story short (attention span), is I want to be able to actually focus on something for more than 10 minutes at a time again. I want to be able to dive headfirst into something again and enjoy it. Not like....have my brain switch off and go "I'm bored, oooooh what's this?" every 5 minutes or so.\
Woof.