Distracting Yourself From Distraction
I’m in class, filmmaking. I’m supposed to be adding foley sounds to a video, but I’m watching Re-Animator and typing out this blog. I have shivers up and down my arms. I feel cold, but I’m also flush and sweaty. That’s normal for me, and it’s kind of annoying. I’m kind of just listening to Re-Animator at this point. It reminds me of high school, middle school, even elementary school, when we first got to use laptops in class. I loved it in 5th-6th grade when they would wheel the huge chromebook cart into class. Each of us got to select our own device, unplugging it from the pod like some sort of alien creature. At this time, the school hadn’t caught on to our tomfoolery. If I can recall correctly, almost every website that we were willing to visit was unblocked. My friends and I had downloaded a Chrome browser extension that let us “destroy” anything on our screens. We’d nuke pearson realize with digital guns and bombs. Surprisingly, the only videos allowed on YouTube were ones specifically verified by administrators, yet like any conniving kid, we found out that if you logged out of your Google account, you could watch anything. Being the nerd I am, I would watch Queen music videos in 6th-grade English instead of writing my papers. I still got them done. I am a nerd after all. In math class, right across the hall, my friends and I would find obscure flash game websites. We essentially became game testers, playing and sharing whatever we could find. The one I remember the most was entitled Douchebag Simulator. It’s pretty self-explanatory what the game was about.
Moving on to middle and high school, I found that most, hrm, “borrowed” and free media websites were unblocked on the school computers. I used to watch South Park and The Simpsons to fill the time in chemistry and social studies. It was even WORSE in 8th grade because I had online school due to COVID. I watched It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Breaking Bad multiple times. For whatever reason, in 10th-grade American history class, I watched Vice. It makes sense, I guess, but it really doesn’t seem like something a 15-year-old girl would watch. I think about it a lot. My favorite website, Tubi, was also unblocked. As I ventured into my Senior year of high school, most, if not all, of the dead air in my classes was filled with movie time. Most of the time, I’d just watch Good Burger or Nacho Libre, movies I knew, so I could kinda just tune out.
To me, distraction helps. It’s a break from whatever banal task I’m provided with. A buffer. However, I do need to break the habit of distraction. It’s
beneficial to me in class, which sounds counterintuitive, but being able to have a buffer from information overload calms my brain. On the other hand, I tend to distract myself too much at home. Ten minutes of YouTube or TV turns into 2 hours. I get too curious, too involved, and suddenly my whole afternoon disappears. I love discovering, listening, consuming, yet it consumes me. I need to, want to, be distracted with my own creativity, rather than others. The only time I am able to distract myself with creativity is at the worst times. For example, an hour before class or work. How do I balance this? I don’t know. I’ll just have to figure it out on my own time. Distract myself from distraction.
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