Evan Xu

an experiment in consumption

005

Week 5! Time is really passing by fast now. I’m settling into summer. It’s been four weeks, almost a full month, since the inception of this blog.

It’s been interesting in just these four weeks to see how my life and my thinking evolves with the seasons and the changing circumstances around me. I’m now knee deep into my internship now, and it feels like the summer is going to wiz by now. Suddenly, it feels like there’s not enough time to complete everything I want to.

Last week, I talked about a lot of indecision in terms of what I want to dedicate my focus to in the remains of the summer. I’ll take this week to hash out a small experiment that I’m setting into motion in my life.

you can only cook what’s in the fridge.

Last week, I averaged somewhere between 10 and 15 hours on instagram. Even though I justify myself in saying that sending memes is my way of keeping in touch with my friends, most of that time is definitely dedicated to just scrolling mindlessly.

What’s more, those two books that I mentioned in my first blog post are still sat on my kitchen table, largely unread. Life, it seems for the past four weeks, just got in the way.

Or I would like to say. What’s closer to the truth is that my analysis paralysis between all the roads and timelines my summer could take, I chose, up until now, to not take my goal of reading these books seriously. It’s an issue of commitment - I didn’t even make it to consistency.

The term ‘brainrot’ is all the rage on the internet these days. A term used to describe a degenerative state of mind produced by short form content, often increasingly useless and meme-y in substance. While I do enjoy some dumbass humor, I can’t help but notice that Instagram has become a daily narcotic, literally suppressing my thoughts and attention. It’s like I’m one of those poor elderly people swiping at a slot machine, just swiping until the next Instagram reel until a funny one shows up. In many ways, I see myself pulling out my phone throughout the day as the modern equivalent of taking a Marlboro out of the box — it’s just I don’t have to step outside during work.

The worst part about brainrot is that I can feel the noticeable effects, especially after I’ve started sitting down and writing these posts. I can’t hold onto an idea like I could before. It’s alarming.

Since last week’s post, I’ve taken my own advice and thought about what exactly it is I want. What’s my endgame? Among the list was the be in shape, to be fit. Nothing mind blowing here, but I started writing down some small goals of what exactly that would look like. For example, “Hey, it’d be cool if I could do 10 pull ups in one set. I feel like that symbolizes some extent of my dedication to my health, fitness, and strength.”

But very quickly I realized something: I want to be fit mentally, too. I think seeing and feeling the state of mind my brain had degenerated to has made me realize that I’m not as sharp as I used to be. I can barely sit down and read for half an hour when I could easily breeze through a Percy Jackson book in two days when I was in elementary school. There’s simply too many fast acting, attention ripping content and media vying for my attention. There’s been a loss of innocence since the days when a book of teenagers and Greek mythos was quite literally the most interesting thing that could be put in front of me.

So then I wrote down the equivalent for my brain: “I want to be able to sit down, read, write, and think for extended periods, and to be able to clarify and express my thoughts clearly”. I feel like that’s kinda absurd that this is the dream state to be in, but I genuinely feel like this is a rarity in a world with Tiktok in it. To me, that statement is the equivalent of feeling in the best shape of my life, but mentally. It symbolizes some extent to my dedication to my thinking, intellect, and just being a human. Being well read, I believe deep down, is core to the human experience.

So now that I’ve come to this conclusion, those 10-15 hours a week on Instagram don’t really reflect who I want to be by the end of summer — or rather, by the end of my life in general. I think about this clip from Bo Burnham a lot.

https://youtu.be/SUTbnjIHfkg?si=33WMZ6AKmU6JqDSO&t=76

They’re coming for every second of your life… It’s because these companies like Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram, and everything, they went public and they went to shareholders, so they have to grow. Their entire models are based off of growth — they cannot stay stagnant…It has to get more of you. We used to colonize land. That was the thing you could expand into, and that’s where money was to be made. We colonized the entire earth. There was no other place for the businesses and capitalism to expand into. And then they realized human attention. They are now trying to colonize every minute of your life… Every single free moment you have is a moment you could be looking at your phone, and they could be gathering information to target ads at you. That’s what’s happening.

I understand that even though I kinda hate the social media game, I’m at least willing to play a little bit. To understand my friends’ humor, to hear about real life events I can invite my friends to, to keep up with people I know in real life… these were the original value proposals of social media. Their pure, un-bastardized forms of connecting to people. (that begs the question, is there a value of connecting to people if it isn’t beyond Instagram DMs? An article for another time.)

But I guess in my attempt to live my life against the grain and to keep my sanity in tact — kinda like someone who didn’t smoke back in the day, I guess (what’s crazy is the surgeon general saying the health crisis of our generation isn’t a disease or smoking but rather social media and loneliness) — I’m going to try to cultivate a life of slower consumption: namely, reading.

Now I’ve tried to do this many times before. In high school, I set daily page goals and my sleep-deprived ass would wake up early to read some pages before the sun even rose. That shit did NOT work because my brain was too tired to process much of anything 💀

I think looking back it was a problem of attitude: I was trying too hard to be a reader just because everyone told me reading was good. But now, I have this angle where it’s an investment on my long term health, and being a reader looks like taking care of myself to the point where I prioritize learning and finding time in my day to keep that promise to myself. I would just like to be the type of person who reads earnestly. That life seems like one that’s more interesting, cultured, and healthier over the one dominated by social media and constant stimulation. I feel like that’s not too much of a hot take, yet I have yet to make any real action to combat the said stimulation.

One final thing that kinda scares me is that even though I thought I was being pretty good about tracking my life in my journals and through this blog, and even though I fully intended to read this summer when I checked out 8 books from the library 4 weeks ago, I literally haven’t made any progress on almost all of those books. It’s scary how these 4 weeks have gone by and how easily something so small like reading a little bit consistently goes by the wayside. The intention was fully there, but this week I realized I really need some routine and accountability, like what I was saying in my last post.

One video that kinda sealed this idea was the first in a series by Tim Demoss on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0krJtb8vxI&

I’d like some more ingredients in my fridge, to cook for myself and share with you and my loved ones. In essence, just be a more interesting human.

So an interesting challenge I’ve set for myself for the foreseeable future:

Finally, some action huh?

I thought I’d start off small, and something I’m at least somewhat confident will make my life better. I got my first subscriber this past week hahaha (heyo!) and it’s so funny how productivity-guru-esque this blog is so far but hey that’s where I’m in my element right now. She did remind me I just can’t hinge too much of my self worth on self improvement. Part of the reason I’ve been able to continue this blog up is because I just find it fun to put words on paper without too much pressure. I hope I can bring that same energy to reading. I gotta remind myself it’s not for some self-improvement bullshit but just for me to get slower, more intentional enjoyment from life.

Until next week,

Evan