Slivers of Time
On dopamine, distraction, reading, and finding more expansiveness in our everyday.
Hello friends,
I led a bike/art trip last weekend. Four full days of nothing but riding bikes, making art, eating food, sitting at camp, drinking coffee. In other words: a window of time full of good things.
These types of adventures reliably elicit a sense of expansiveness. There is so much that is possible in a day! In my opinion, the bicycle is particularly well-suited for cultivating a creative state. I always like to refer to it as the “idea machine,” the act of pedaling and inertia serving as a lubricant for a continuous flow of thoughts, one organically evolving into the next. With your hands on the handlebars, you can’t jot an idea down or look something up, you simply let the ideas continue to do their thing and see where they end up leading.
When you have a few days away—whether it’s from an extended weekend or a longer vacation—eventually you return home, spend a day at the computer and assorted other regular life tasks, look up late in the evening and think to yourself “where did that day go?” The pace of digitally-connected life often leaves me feeling like a ping pong ball that’s constantly gone back and forth all day long. It feels like my brain never has the time to land in one place.
Of course, much of this is my own doing. It’s too easy to check something, to cut a task midway and read a message or look at someone else’s photos that will inevitably elicit a negative feeling. The urge is often too strong to avoid. I’m distracted. I’m addicted to the refreshing the various feeds. I know it’s bad for me. I do it anyway.
I hate feeling like this. I am sure a lot of you do as well.
I just finished reading Dr. Anna Lembke’s book Dopamine Nation. As she writes: