Journal Time!

Focus, and Learning | September 7, 2023

There is a lot of information out there. Too much, in fact. It's a game of ping-pong where your attention is drawn as you scroll and watch and scan and read so much every day. It's most just, noise.

Podcasts, music, videos, ideas, jokes, news, other various nonsense flotsam that washes on your shores. How much of that is retained by the end of the day? What about after an hour? Ten minutes? What even is it, if it's nothing worth keeping?

In the Western tradition, much of music is about what is played. In the Eastern, however, the sound of silence is like an entire scale in itself. How much of the music of our lives is just, noise? Noise for noises' sake. How much of the interstice between events we actually want to do each day is mindless noise?

It's a purposeless way to spend most of our time, I say. I know I do it, too, just like everybody else. I'm not sure how much of any that I've seen today will impact my tomorrow. It barely affects today. So why do I do it even? Why do I fill my ears while I'm busy filling my eyes and my mouth?

It's all distraction; it's distraction from the exigence of now. It's not a lack of focus so much as a refusal of one altogether. It's noncommitment. And it deserves to be stopped.

Yeah I'm preachy. What of it?

Blood in the wires...

= Serial Experiments Lain