Obsession and Interruption

   

       

We live in a world where it is painfully easy to be drawn into the depths of obsession. Whatever your poison is, books, music, news, television, or the stereotypical obsession of videogames, the internet has made it extremely easy to fall into them. I am as big or a bigger victim of this than anyone, sometimes I will start doing something and then only stop when I realize it is 3 A.M. in the morning. This topic is currently very relevant for me due to the resurgence of Pokemon in my life. Last week, Google’s April Fools joke reminded me of the pure joy of obsessively playing Pokemon, and I’ve spent a considerable amount of time since then locked in to it.

Obsession usually begins with a chunk of free time. You realize that you don’t have to do anything important for a while, and so you begin. You put the first episode of House of Cards on Netflix, you choose your starter, you start to look into a news story, it starts as an innocuous thing. But the thing is, our obsessions have ways to keep us hooked. Netflix begins to show the next episode. When you read articles online, you can get caught in chains of links. And if you’re like me, those methods work like a charm.  And before too long, your free time is gone and your obsession begins to eat into other obligations.

The next stage is usually a form of rationalization. It’s O.K., you tell yourself. You’ll get to that project after one episode. You’ll quit after just… one more turn. This rationalization becomes more and more extreme as you continue, until you finally get to some threshold where you realize you are being ridiculous and stop. But by that time, the damage is often already done. You are hopelessly behind, you’ve lost a lot of sleep, and you look back at the last N hours in disgust at yourself.

So how does an ordinary, nerdy redblooded individual avoid this obsession before it gets too far? The answer comes I think, from our past. When I was younger, I wouldn’t be able to sink into the obsession for too long because it would always be interrupted by something (usually the call of a parent). And I think in our adult line, this interruption is the exact thing missing from the obsession occasion. When you live on your own, and are responsible for your own well-being, there is nothing to stop you from becoming locked into an activity. Uninterrupted, certain types of people such as myself will not even notice the time passing. So if you suffer from the same weaknesses that I do, the best technique is to create interruptions for yourself. Set alarms when you begin to get into these activities, giving yourself a reasonable time limit. More importantly, stick to those commitments once you are in the thick of the activity, don’t let yourself rationalize a small extension or that train of thought will lead you to ruin.

There is a bright side to this obsession, I think. The same instinct that locks us in to these somewhat meaningless activities is the instinct that drives people to be locked into their productive passions. It is the same sensation that I get in the middle of a writing project, that lets me finish it on only a few cups of coffee and an hour of sleep. It is the same thing that leads famous pianists to put in the hours of work that ends in magnificent performances. Perhaps with the right sense of direction, obsession can become the basis of true passion.