Facebook newsfeed, Tweets, Reddits, sub-Reddits, Imgur, check email, Facebook again, back to Imgur, oh a funny comic strip, post on Facebook, check email again, message on Facebook, funny cat pictures, tweet funny cat pictures, look on Reddit for more funny cat pictures, rinse and repeat.
Distracted man with headphones
Image credit: Sara Cimino
I apologize if I just described the majority of your waking life.
But the affliction of attention saturation disorder is not limited to useless social media interactions. Earlier this year I experimented with giving up sports and politics for a month. I was blown away with how much information I once considered vital and important soon felt like meaningless fluff — sensationalized info-tainment meant to keep me clicking rather than informing and influencing my life.
Practice some self-discipline in your life.
YOU FAIL BECAUSE YOU DON’T TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT HAPPENS IN YOUR LIFE
Also known as having-an-excuse-for-everything disorder. To fix the problems in your life you must have power over them. You can’t have power over aspects of your life unless you take responsibility for them. Therefore if you don’t take responsibility for what happens to you, you fail.
There are numerous situations in life which may seem completely unfair and insurmountable, like God decided to piss in your Corn Flakes® unfair, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
I know it’s tempting to blame your problems on some external factor, to insist that it was impossible, that it wasn’t your fault, that you couldn’t have done anything to help it, you see, it was Abu the taxi driver who accidentally ran over some little boy’s dog, and the guy actually pulled over to see if it was OK causing a more-than-unnecessary 30-minute delay, and the police came and questioned you until they realized you offered little Timmy some beer to make him feel better — i.e., to help him erase the impending decades of trauma and images of blood-splayed sidewalk that will surely haunt the first quarter of his life — and stop the crying, my god, the little brat could fucking cry, you were just trying to help, to clear his poor undeveloped psyche with some alcohol; but hey, then the cops came and the (drunk) little bastard told them about the beer, told them everything, ab-so-lute-ly everything EXCEPT that you were just being a nice guy, which you obviously never get credit for; and dude, it’s not your fault cops are so anal-fucking-retentive about child alcohol laws; it’s a fucking puritan, fascist state anyway; and hey man, I’m sorry I didn’t show up; it’s not my fault, I promise it will never happen again; there’s always the next wedding, right? I won’t be in jail for that one, I promise.
Yeah, fuck people like that.