Artist Morning Pages
Is the internet fracking your brain? Try these remedies
I used to start every morning in my studio free-writing (3 pages, á Julia Morgan) and then 10 to 15 minutes of meditative brush painting. I painted lines, circles, rectangles and triangles, trying for consistent, graceful brushstrokes. I’d finish with looping arcs of paint that felt like dancing.
I learned this meditative drawing technique from painter Paul Foxton. I let it grow organically to meet my needs. It was a calming way to start the day. It was fun and it improved my brush skills enormously.
But I stopped for a long time, for no good reason other than being distracted. By life, by work, and mostly by social media, the great attention thief.
Our attention is the mother lode of technology, the gold mine, the gusher that feeds the modern internet and modern business. We are the new frontier, our attention rendered into data sold to the highest (or most forceful) bidder.
The internet is fracking our brains
D.Graham Burnett, professor at Princeton University thinks the internet is fracking our brains. Algorithms push deep into our consciousness, using our craving for the dopamine rush of the endless doom-scroll to fracture our minds. They break apart the structure of our thoughts to manipulate, reshape and control our inner worlds, thereby shaping the reality of our outer worlds.
I admit, I’ve been seduce and fracked by socials. I linger longer on Meta platforms, on Reddit, on Google news than I ever intend to when I pick up my phone. Reading, reacting, responding. I fire off a scathing reply and am immediately filled with a rush of pleasure. Oh, it feels so good!
Until it doesn’t. Until every scroll leaves me feeling hollowed out, scraped with a dull shovel, raw and infected. Every reply and comment feels empty and cynical.
Lately, with the ever-present and unwelcome advent of artificial intelligence, the internet has felt even less comfortable, less safe, less satisfying. Engineered to pry our thoughts apart so businesses can steal them, mold them, control them, and reinsert them, the super-pressurized algorithms work at hyper speed, fracking our minds ever faster.
Recently I’m feeling stoned from too much cyber-time and I’m not enjoying it. I feel my creativity and energy wilt. I feel like I’ve lost myself.
It’s too easy to pull out the phone (I’ve done it several times while writing this post!) and scroll socials and news sites, and the dopamine hit is too seductively delicious. The results too damaging.
I’ve deleted most social media from my phone. I’ve set timers to restrict usage. It’s really hard. The siren song of socials is a powerful call. But ignoring that ever present enticement has it’s benefits.
As I pull away from socials and the internet, I find my old self returning
In the morning, I long for my real-time studio habits. I find I wake with thoughts and energy and excitement to get into the studio. I find I’m more productive, and happier throughout the day. Without the mechanized pressure of the internet, my mind returns to fertility. Thoughts and dreams and my own desires are filling my mind.
I’m finding my way back to myself.
How about you? How are you feeling about the internet? Are you pulling back from socials? How does it feel to reclaim your mind? I’ve turned on the comments for this post. Let me know!
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