Dear Substack, distract me.

Do we need to be distracted all the time to survive?

Distractions, can we live without them?

You sit alone for a few minutes, then all of your thoughts catch up with you.
All of those feelings... You thought you could outrun them. You thought you could hide... But you can’t now.

You’re stuck.

Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. You are the prey. The victim. The one who’s doomed to suffer.

Quick, you need to do something about this. Play a song, scroll social media, open Netflix, play a game. ANYTHING. Anything but sitting alone with yourself.

Look around you. How many industries have been built on this idea... the idea of us needing distractions to survive. The idea that spending time with ourselves is just insufferable.

I saw what the FIFA World Cup 2026 did, for example... releasing an entire album... 18 songs and about 10 music videos... why? To not allow people to think about anything? I don’t know, maybe it’s just part of the system. Part of how things work.

Maybe we all are. Nothing is wrong with entertainment, of course. I’m not here to say that watching a movie, a match, or scrolling social media is our problem.

I’m just wondering if we really need to be distracted 24/7, or are we so used to being distracted that we forgot how to just sit still and feel our feelings.

It’s crazy how scrolling social media is more common than just sitting. It’s crazy how many people roll their eyes when someone says they like to sit and do nothing or just meditate. Because... WHAT???? That’s not normal!! You know what’s normal?? Binge-watching 17 episodes in one day.

Maybe we need distractions because we’re so afraid of what would happen without them. Or maybe we need them because we’re scared of silence.

Or maybe we’re just scared of ourselves.

I know I won’t stop watching... stuff. I won’t stop scrolling. I won’t stop distracting myself... not completely.

But I wonder what would happen to me if I just sat in that discomfort.
If I learned to be with myself with no agendas, with no distractions.
Just reconnecting. Just being. No more. No less.

I tried games, movies, shows, sports, social media, etc.
Why not try this too? Maybe I already had the answer. Maybe I just needed to sit with it. With me. Alone. With no distractions.

---

Every Wednesday I try to make sense of life’s weirdness by Recapping the weirdest things happening in life and on the internet... with thoughts, jokes, and occasional feelings.