Addiction to Entertainment

Before I continue, I would like to point out that entertainment is not bad as my mind or your mind might suggest. This doesn’t mean that it is good either, it just is what it is. Entertainment, a chance to escape the mundane. What might be of value is if it sits in line with where one wants to go or not. That is where it’s effectiveness or ineffectiveness can be examined.

I have noticed lately that my life has become one of seeking out entertainment interspersed by few activities of tangible value — from the moment I wake up to the moment when I go to sleep. The reduction or the elimination of one form of entertainment only has created more time to indulge in another. Therefore, I don’t feel much difference in quitting one form of it. I recently stopped using Instagram and Facebook , but my consumption of YouTube and Movies &TV Series content has skyrocketed.

I wake up, the I seek entertainment through sports — watching NBA games, or highlights, listening to talk shows about NBA, then there is football, catching up on scores, stats, highlights, who scored. I accuse myself of filling up my mind with useless information, this is how I do it. Then may be a movie, a series, read pieces, walk around the neighborhood to the gym, to my friends, talk, listen to podcasts, chats, do this and that, till the time I go to sleep. They are not extreme pieces of entertainment, but they eat in to my time where I could perhaps do something of value, to solve the current obstacle that I have which getting my finances in order. It solidifies in me habits of veering off that path.

This is one thing that I absolutely have to do something about, but at the same time I know that doing something about it in a reactionary way will only lead to more problems. Therefore, I will examine carefully and arrive at a place where what needs to stop stops with the least or no inner conflicts. Forcefully trying to change the mind is akin to grabbing a dog by it’s throat, it will retaliate, the mind has to constantly be made to witness/see/understand the effects of certain causes in order for it to naturally change course. The assumption made here is that the reader of this has realized that the pull towards entertainment is from the mind. It is the mind’s doing.