The first hour of my day is quiet. The house is still asleep. I sit up in bed and reach for my phone. I tell myself I am just checking one thing. The time. Messages that arrived overnight. I hold the phone close to my face. The screen lights up the room. I scroll. I do not notice how long I stay there. It is already April. I turned 49 in February, and it has been almost two months. Lately I have been feeling like I am living in a fog.
I want to spend my time on meaningful things: reading, walking in nature, journaling, and reflecting. But somehow the hours slip away. I sit down to check one message, and then it is an hour later and I am watching a stranger argue about politics. I feel hollow afterward, as if I have given something away without intending to.
The word is “attention.” I am reading a book, Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. In one chapter it says attention is the beginning of devotion. Only with full focus can you truly love, care for, or experience something. I thought about my daughter telling me something sweet from her day while I nodded along, still scrolling. I let many such moments pass because I was too distracted. Am I even having these moments? The book asks: Can you have an experience you do not experience? That stopped me cold.
I knew social media was harmful. I knew I was the product being sold. But I did not fully understand that I am losing time. I am being systematically manipulated. The platforms use slot-machine psychology, variable rewards, and persuasive design. The author called it the “attention economy,” and we are the products, not the users. Their profits come from seizing our attention and selling it to advertisers. They track what I pay attention to, what makes me angry or afraid, and they feed me more of it. The author says we’re not even products anymore. We’re fuel like logs thrown on a fire and used up until there’s nothing left. They benefit from our resources, time, energy, and attention.
What struck me most is that the damage extends beyond the hour I lose on social media. It changes how I see the world. The book says social media distorts what we think matters, what threats we face, and how we see others. I have noticed I am more anxious now. More cynical. I catch myself assuming the worst about people, even friends whose politics I disagree with. The fear carries over to real life. And then I wonder: is this really me? Or has my attention been hijacked for so long that I’ve forgotten what I actually care about?
There is a line in the book about how attention cannot easily monitor itself. The only tool you have to see what is happening to your attention is your attention. If that is already captured, you may not notice anything is wrong. That was difficult to ignore. I have told myself for years that I am fine, that I am in control, and that scrolling is harmless. But what if that’s exactly what captured attention would say?
I also appreciated the honesty about our own role in this mess. The book says we give in willingly. Something in us wants distraction. I notice this when I sit down to write or draw. I feel restless. I often feel the urge to check my phone and deeply feel the need to do research on a topic. It feels like avoidance: avoiding solitude or being alone with myself. The distractions come from within, not outside.
There is also the political side. I see how outrage is rewarded. One scandal replaces the last, from the Epstein case to the US-Israel-Iran war. It feels difficult to have a grounded conversation. The book emphasizes this is part of the business model. I feel that deeply with steady exhaustion, yet I keep returning to it. I am tired of feeling like this. I am tired of feeling fractured. I would rather not look back in ten years and realize I spent my finite life scrolling through things I did not care about.
The chapter ends by saying political crises need political solutions, and we also need to understand our own role in this. I do not have a clear answer yet. But I can begin with admitting this: I am distracted and frustrated. I want to care about what matters to me. I want to want what I actually care about. And maybe by admitting it, it can be a perfect place to begin.
I write about Iban culture, ancestral rituals, creative life, emotional truths, and the quiet transformations of love, motherhood, and identity. If this speaks to you, subscribe and journey with me.
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