FOMO on Bad Shit

“I think doom scrolling can be described as FOMO on bad shit.”

Most mornings, as I settle in to write in my daily journal, the time I spend with a pen and notebook is generally interrupted by an equivalent amount of time going back and forth from notebook to phone, and phone back to notebook. Back and forth, until I have finished my morning of thinking in ink, and absorbing things to think about since I put my phone to rest the night before.

Today, I went at it differently, and it hit me like a self-inflicted rolling pin to the middle of my forehead.

It took me 37 minutes to go from “who’s lookin’ at my last IG Post” to “how many FB friends are having birthdays” to “shit that added minutes to the doomsday clock while I was sleeping” to…

Yeah, well, when there were no more notifications to respond to, I opened my journal, and wrote,

“Did my SWIPES first. My brain is already TIRED from it. I think DOOM SCROLLING can be described as FOMO on bad shit”.

And in the remaining hour that I spent scribbling everything from last night’s dreams, to plans for a future that has never been guaranteed, there was nothing I either thought or wrote that was more succinct than that opening pair of sentences. For whatever reason, and the reasons are likely innumerable, as surely as that doom we have to scroll, there is with it, a fear that, if we don’t scroll, something is gonna go down that we fucking needed to know while we were looking the other way. Looking away, sometimes for very good reasons, even if those very good reasons feel so very wrong.

And by the way, this blog post is not about why, or how not to do it.

For me, today’s free-write is only about acknowledging that THIS IS WHAT WE DO. Today, this space is a zero condemnation space for how often we feel like shit for doing that which we don’t want to do, but feel compelled to do it anyway, beginning with my FOMO on bad shit. Will I do it again? Probably. Probably later today. Probably tomorrow. Will I try not to? Probably NOT, because I’m old, and I have finally accepted that there are things I do that I shouldn’t do that, if doing them doesn’t lead to hospitalization or death… or hurt someone I love… that I give myself permission to do it. My only requirement in doing these things is, learning, growing, and being a better late-stage human than I was, back when I would have lost my shit on myself, and on others, by trying to stop doing them. These are the rants, people.

End tiny rant.

Oh, and, because of “learning, growing, and being a better late-stage human”… I have a friend back in LA (yes, I still have friends in LA) who, overnight, sent me a meme that goes along with my blog post from Monday. It came with these words,

“That’s my advice for dealing with writer’s block: Follow the fun. If you aren’t having fun, you are doing it wrong.”

Jordan Peele

That’s enough for now. Scroll ya later.