Everyone knows the Internet is bad for our powers of concentration. The Internet, in its current state, is full of chaos energy that pulls and pushes us in a billion different potential directions. Hyperlinks, recommended videos, “if you like THAT, you’ll love this” – the algorithms learn what we want and feed us accordingly.
Ironically, it was one of the few sane voices on X (forever in my heart, Twitter), https://x.com/SketchesbyBoze, that changed things for me recently. He was posting about the pleasure of reading Middlemarch by George Eliot. It sounded so sublime and challenging that I shortly thereafter picked up a copy.
Within the first three pages, I had to look up about six words. I like to consider my vocabulary robust, but this book had my number. And it obviously wasn’t flexing on me. She was just writing in her own voice as a brilliant late nineteenth century novelist. I read the first chapter of the first book (she had originally published it as eight little installments) and I was exhausted.
Maybe exhausted isn’t the right word. I felt like I needed to recover. It felt like I had just lifted a personal record with the barbell or set a new pace for the mile. Winded, sweating, and flooded with endorphins. I could tell that it was obviously beautiful prose. It was lucid and insightful and wonderful and just fun to read. It was fun to be challenged.
But even as I finished that chapter, mentally huffing and puffing, I wondered if I had received any new emails. What was happening on Instagram? What new ads was I missing on Facebook? Sirens, the lot of them. I can still hear them calling me.
Detox will take time. I know that. Guardrails will have to be put in place. I still “need” my phone for some basic things. But I’m going to try and recapture my ability to focus. Slow pace. Progressive overload. At least, until I can lift and run with the giants.