The Slow Demise of my attention span

Somewhere along the way, my attention span suffered a sluggish downward spiral, like an angel with one broken wing.

As a child, I sat in my south-facing bedroom, already poorly lit during the day, and read long past when the sun had sunk low on the other side of the house, and I squinted at the tiny words, willing my eyes to make out their meaning.  (My mother insists that this is probably a large part of why my eyesight is so atrocious—and while it probably is, my father’s is still worse, and I’m going to stubbornly blame genetics until the day I die.)  It would be well into twilight before I’d be forced to stand, or maybe be called for dinner.  Regardless, my attention span really took a hammer to my eyes, and maybe that’s why by now, at twenty-two, I’ve disavowed it.

Now I pick up a book and I make it through the prologue before my eyes and mind wander.  Maybe it’s to blame for my thick-lensed glasses, and my subconscious is trying to save myself from other lasting damage.  Maybe it’s part of the epidemic of technological dependency that the baby boomers have insisted is destroying brains and lives—and maybe they’re right.  Maybe I am less intelligent now than I was at eight entirely because I’ve got an iPhone.

Considering that at eight I also refused to get up to turn the light on to preserve my eyesight, I’m gonna question that assertion.

But the point still stands: where the hell did my attention span go?  It’s not just me; the whole ‘fake news’ bullshit is pretty indicative of a larger problem.  People have started reading headlines and believing that they know the whole story, which is never the case, because headlines are now totally focused on clickbait because all media is competing for views just to stay afloat.

It’s not just with books, either.  I can barely commit to an hour to watch an episode of a television show.  Don’t even suggest a full length movie.  I stare at Spotify and try to decide what to listen to because I’m looking for something so specific that I’ll probably change the playlist or the album after one song.  I can’t stay interested in shows, so I’m behind on everything.  I haven’t finished the book series I started in high school because I can’t get through a four hundred page YA novel.

And on the other hand, I’m still fixating.  Sometimes the opposite happens; I play the same song on repeat for thirty-six hours without getting sick of it.  Or maybe I do get sick of it, but I can’t find anything else that I’ll let myself listen to.  And I can’t watch a tv show, because then I’d have to turn off the music.  And I’m all caught up on that one tv show, so I should watch another, except that the season hasn’t finished for the first one, so I can’t move on to something else.

There’s too much to write, or read, or watch, or listen to, and I don’t have time for any of it so how do I prioritize?  If I watch tv than I’m not writing, and if I’m writing than I’m not reading, and if I’m reading than I’m not catching up on tv.  And because I can’t focus on any of it, or make a decision, I get behind on everything.  I’ve got twelve books checked out from the library, renewing them every four days in case someone puts them on hold, and I haven’t touched any of them in weeks.

What?!

When did this happen?  In college?  In high school?  I couldn’t get through a thirty-page chapter of my AP US History textbook, and then I’d be behind.  I couldn’t get through a three-page article for my college sociology course, and then I’d get behind.  Anytime I have to do something, I freeze, because if I have to do one thing then I have to do ten others too, and what do I prioritize when life’s so short?

I don’t have an answer to any of these questions.  Maybe if I did I’d be writing my short story or novel instead of this.  Maybe I’d be caught up on The Bold Type.  Maybe I’d have gotten through more of the economics books that have been sitting in a pile on my desk for over a month now.

Maybe I wouldn’t send texts like, “Why aren’t I immortal?!” and, “I can’t die if the world goes to shit; I’ve got too much to do.”  Maybe I wouldn’t be a massive self-centered asshole.

Or maybe I’d be more of a self-centered asshole.  I don’t know.  Maybe.  But life’s too short, and there’s too much to do to spend enough time thinking about quantum physics to answer that question.