Something I saw some time ago: “Depleted brains seek distraction.” I wish I could attribute it, but I was tired, and scrolling, and now I’ve forgotten without any possibility of recall who said it.

But it certainly seems abundantly true; the more tired I am the more likely I am to seek distraction, whether it’s the omnipresent lure of my phone or… other stuff. I’m well aware that stimming isn’t a purely ADHD/autism/neurodiverse phenomenon, pretty much everyone stims (tapping feet, drumming fingers, twirling hair) but I notice I do it a lot more when I’m tired. One tell I’ve become acutely aware of, for obvious reasons, is that I’m more likely to scat (in the musical, non-horrific sense of the word; I see you grinning there — stop it). Making up words and singing them at speed is just something I do, and as far as I can tell have always done. Perhaps it’s a hangover from my fundamentalist childhood.

Anyway, that’s one of the ways I know I’m tired. I used to get more verbal tics when I was tired too, but therapy seems to have got rid of a lot of those. These days it’s just the scatting. Ski-ba-bop-ba-dop-bop.

Weird stuff everyone does(?)

There you go, that seems like a topic for this newsletter: weird shit that everyone does — or at least, that lots of people do. Do you do anything you think is a bit odd and probably can’t do in polite society but that is also perfectly normal? I’m sure you do. Feel free to reply and I’ll put some in the next newsletter. I’ll volunteer another one: Trichotillomania. I don’t have this very badly (it’s not the reason I went bald or anything, that was plain old boring male-pattern baldness) but I do have it to a degree; it only really manifested once I grew a beard. For some reason there’s a few bits of beard I absent-mindedly pick or pull at and I’d really rather not. It’s not good for the beard, and like other stims — I’m pretty sure it’s a stim — it pops up mainly when I am tired, bored, or slightly nervous. Driving is typical.

There you go. I hope that was enough TMI for one newsletter! You are probably used to it by now.

Where I’m up to

My horrible AI article seems to have done well.

I’m writing a follow-up of sorts, because apparently I am a prose masochist, and I’m thinking of turning going to turn it into a video essay. There’s not much to report on the business-development front today, (although a shop I am stocking my postcards at as a kind of test has reported they are selling well – and remember, there is still time to join the Two Ruru Print Club this month if you want to subscribe to all my art, forever!) as it was mostly looking after the kids. Which was wonderful, the kids are great company. Whenever I feel a bit overloaded I remember how lucky I am to see as much of them as I do, and that’s why the nagging urge to grab at my phone keeps annoying me. On that note:

Bricked

A friend got one of those Brick things ($100!) and said it was helpful, so I asked him how it was going. He had this to say:

It’s a wee device you can magnetise to your fridge or whatever. When you get the attached app, you select which phone apps you want the device to block

Then you simply tap the device and it blocks you from being able to use the apps until you tap again to unblock them

While it’s active, opening the apps gets you this:

It’s been life changing so far man, honestly can’t recommend it enough

Anxiety has gone down, focus is way better, haven’t doom scrolled since I got it. I check the apps when I want to contact folks or check in, then turn them off again

And that sounds… really clever, actually. Ulysses Pact apps usually become ineffective when it becomes habitual to bypass them; adding a physical location to them (like Odysseus’ mast!) makes a lot of sense in terms of reducing distractions yet still allowing you to access them if you’re actually need to. It’s a cool idea, and yet like nearly all self-improvement doohickeys I still feel it’s too expensive for what it is! That said, $100 would pay for itself pretty quickly if it really did work to reduce distractions.

Sleeeep

My plan for less distraction in this moment is not a Brick, for now. (Focus Friend is fun, free and helpful; the only annoying thing is that I keep finding myself forgetting to set it!) Instead it’s back to my eternal battle: just getting the heck to bed. If I can carve out an extra hour or two’s sleep I will be much less distractable. The problem is I am temperamentally a night owl who would love to remain one, but the kids don’t give me that option. And as such my total sleep time on a good night is around the 6 hour mark¹ which is enough, but man, more would be great.

And if you are perpetually tired and could do with an early night (and have the ability to get an early night, not everyone does!) and are reading this at my unseasonably early send-out time of ten-ish PM, this is your permission slip to catch some shut-eye.

30 Day Challenge update

I had been meaning to send a Cynic’s Guide out for the longest time to all my subscribers but kept overthinking it. “But it has to be good!” It gets me every time. In the spirit of not overthinking, I have arbitrarily decided to send this one out to… everyone. For everyone who isn’t keeping up with my attempt to send an email every day for 30 days, it is going really well, to the surprise of probably quite a few people, including me!

The rule here is YMMV, Your Mileage May Vary, and I am deeply aware of how 30 day challenges can (for some) be just another example of toxic hustle culture. Happily, I have found the experience incredibly positive: I gave up a bit of my post-children’s-bedtime scroll fest and occasional videogame binge to write every day and I couldn’t be happier with the results. I will absolutely be keeping this going, because once the thirty days of daily emails are up (next week!) I’m going to write other stuff. That fiction that’s been sitting unhacked-at forever? That’s next on the list. Weekly Cynic’s Guide emails? You’re damn right. It’s happening. And I dare you, by God I double dog dare ya: if you’ve got some scrolling time you’d like to make a dent in then why not attempt thirty days of doing something else that you want to do in the time that’s currently getting munched by your phone? It doesn’t have to be a big deal, it doesn’t have to take long, and it doesn’t matter if you only do half the days. It’ll still be 15 more days of doing that thing than you’d have managed otherwise.

Let me know.

1. Don’t ask about the bad ones.