Aaron M. Fortkamp

Recently watched a video about staring at a wall. The man was trying to start a YouTube following, I don’t remember his hook, just that he wanted to make videos and have people watch them. He’s young, married, mid-20s and working from home, and the video was about trying the easiest method of increasing personal productivity, of getting beyond the speedbumps that inhibit you and making it to the smooth flow-state of creation. Which is what we all want, right, I’m assuming. I’m not the only one who hates having his brain stuck in the craved, addled, thirsty, click-and-scroll loop because doing the thing you actually want to do seems more effort than you could possibly come up with and that amount is not all that much, even.

Anyway he tried staring at a wall. Presumably he was on salary, because he would do this in the dead middle of the work day. There were other caveats too, no screens to start the day unless you were doing work upon them, I forget the others, but the main thrust of the video was you need to do the merciful thing and put your poor brain out of its misery, because when you’re scrolling forever it’s not because the content you find there is so interesting, it’s not even the content you’re actually feeding your brain with anymore, you’re barely paying attention to that. What your brain is fixated upon is the next video, the next post, the one you can’t see. It’s the letter inside the envelope you’re on the verge of pulling out to read, and just like that letter, with the phones you’re fucked twice over because you’ve got two points of anticipation now, your eyes and your hand, two systems of input being teased with potential entertainment. And with TikTok and the like it’s three, your auditory input system is under attack as well.

We don’t know how to be bored anymore, I’ve said this before and others have, too, and the wall-staring is an attempt to force the brain to go cold-turkey on anticipatory entertainment. Hands, eyes, ears, all. Stare at a wall. Like I said, the dude had an ideal environment to practice this sort of stimulus-drought meditation, his wife also worked from home but in her own office and quietly. He could control everything around him to the point where he could turn it all off, and no one would walk by, there was no risk of small talk interruptions, or phone calls, or alarms, or children, or pets, or customers, or traffic. None of it. He had his choice of walls to pick, even, and he picked one, and upon it his eyes rested for ten minutes, next day fifteen, next day twenty. He made it up to thirty but decided that was overkill.

Because after his third day trying this he was able to feel when his brain unlocked, and it was usually somewhere between the ten and twenty minute mark. Afterward he’d get back to his job and typically reported having a better-than-average day of productivity (so even if he was on-the-clock, as it goes, surely they could cost-benefit this and let it skate). After watching about 3/4 of his journey video I was like Oh, it’s a smoke break, that’s what we used to do was smoke breaks and he’s doing one, just without the smoking.

When I was writing a lot, in grad school, and I did write a whole lot then, hours a day, I didn’t make much note of it at the time but that’s what the smoking was best for, was the break, the brain reset. Even without cell phones constantly beckoning we still had ways to waste time, namely television but also… what else, surely there was something else, god we had it so good and we didn’t even know it. More of a problem was that duration of work than the paucity of it, I’d go for an hour, two hours maybe, and then my eyes would start to figuratively cross and I’d hit the wrong keys and pick the wrong words and mash the delete key about 40 times more frequently than was typical, which was already a lot. At my favorite restaurant in San Marcos, I sat in the hookah section even though I couldn’t usually afford a hookah so that when it was break time I didn’t have to stand up and go anywhere for nicotine. This was actually a meaningless distinction because I almost always stood up anyway, usually at least to go pee but even if only just to stretch the body out, return bloodflow to places suffering a dearth of oxygen, allow my eyes to focus upon objects more than a yard out.

If I didn’t want to buy an entire meal, even for the price of being able to sit and smoke, sometimes I opted for a coffee shop instead, which did not allow for indoor smoking of any sort. So outside it was, and when I went outside I wasn’t looking for a good place to stand and smoke, I was looking for a place to balance, to walk and balance and turn 180 and walk back thusly. Not like a highwire or a single solitary balance beam, I didn’t need to bring danger or an excess of required skill into the equation, I didn’t want my mind to think about the steps at all, actually, that’s what I mean by balancing, is to have a straight line to walk upon without any option for simple deviation from the line. If it was the edge of a sidewalk, with a little precipice on one side, a dropoff into the parking lot, that would work. Even better would be some cement barrier to like a flower bed or stairwell, something anyone could handle walking but not blindfolded, no no not without sight, you could break a leg, or worse.

Enforced wall staring. That’s what it was. You hardly had to engage your brain or eyes or body to accomplish it but hardly was the exact right amount. 

I just tried it, just now, I’m in this weird position between job roles at work wherein I have been freed from the responsibilities of one without yet being given the permissions required to fully do the other, but even when I am, guess what? the new one’s salary. I hereby resolve to take breaks, ten to twenty minutes, to go find a nice cement berm like the one next to the picnic table break area and walk it back and forth with a mug of water to hold to give my hands and mouth something to do but also just barely something, and I’ll formulate ideas and get fine with getting bored again and I’ll do my work swiftly and then write, then I’ll write, then I’ll finish early and write write write.

The common phrase, “The meaning of life is to live it.” I usually interpret that in my subconscious in the most passive sense, positively passive, sure, but I hear it passive all the same. Like, open your eyes, pay attention to what’s happening, be aware of your existence, experience the things that could otherwise pass you by. Probably a more healthy way to think of it would be to shift it into the active interpretation of “live,” as in “live your truth” or “live large.” Go do that thing, go make that art, go punch that nazi, go fall in love, go try, go fail, go compete, go complete a project or if you haven’t any projects go start one, don’t just be aware of your child’s effervescent childhood, go help them create it.

You know the funny thing is I can’t stand this brand of writing, this inspirational dreck, it’s nauseating to me. Who are you to tell me how I should be inspired. You know nothing about me. Nothing. And what’s more you know nothing about anyone else, either, so shut your proverb-hole, the only thing you can do is describe yourself and insofar as that applies to anyone else is a dice roll at best, and hardly within your capacity to determine. You don’t see me, you only recognize what l have that looks like you. But my trauma is not your trauma, no matter how much it may resemble, and my brain is not your brain, and you do not know what I need to hear to make me feel better or solve my problems.

So please, don’t take any of the above as dictation or advice. 

That said, please do not actually smoke on your own smoke breaks, but do drink more water, getting up to pee is good for you.