Some progress on assets for a new animation that I’m working on.
The Doom Loop illustrating summaries of Cal Newport’s Podcast Episode 398 w/Arthur Brooks, delving into the topic of digital addictive cycles that similarly parallel with drug addiction cycles.
“A rat doesn’t know that he’s in a maze.”
I often times don’t know how much time sinks until I look at the clock.
The billionaire boys, master puppeteers of distracting social media and the mass consumerist habits that leech us, have it to where we can access this unadulterated escape, essentially drugs, anytime, any place, every moment. The urge to immediately hit escape to what feels boring, awkward, unknowingly scary or insecure has not only become normal, it has physiologically changed habits in a way that has done more damage to our brains than good.
What suffers are the stems of electrode that fire in our brain circuits, that once stretched our memory or scratch an itch to solve, or found focus to read/write, seemed to all have dropped off the cliff.
Before my own recent revelations, I’ve often mistakened leisure time for free time.
This episode of Cal Newport’s reframing of leisure has entirely shifted my perceptions, thinking that ‘free-time’ is actually more synonymous with ‘productive’ time.
I thought, as many do, that plopping down and forfeiting my body and brain to what algorithms have served up, or what gamified checkbox achievements are ready to check-off was a great use of Leisure.
When actually, productivity is far from it.
A version of me in the 90s remembers distinctly playing on a small V-tech keyboard LCD toy learning how to run Basic Programming. Also contrary to that, using GameBoy to play as an 8-bit Gargryole.
The adult version of me, full circle looking back, now knows the clear difference between learning and just simply killing time.
Still to this day, my push for productive habits are echoes of Mom being the firewall separating ‘educational toys’ vs. plain ol’ fun stuff. Challenging as it always has been to sit still, honed in, focused to study, create, or reflect, evermore so now still feels like a much needed and necessary brain-break, to unhinge free from today’s all consuming digital Doom Loops.
Brooks’ puts Leisure as: “Doing something that they don’t pay you for, where you grow as a person.” This reframe for Leisure pitches an answer to Purpose, as improving 3 categories of self: Spiritual, Relational, Intellectual. Inverse of being a vegetable laid out, bummin’ it at the beach.
That said, it progresses from finding purpose, to eventually being led to a ‘calling’ which comes from:
- Earning our success by creating value.
- Being of service and/or a need to others.
