Distraction

It started with Bejeweled. The need for a constant distraction. I'd play the game over and over and over again to keep my mind off of my ever present anguish after losing Korbin. As my high score plateaued, this eventually morphed in to checking my emails constantly. Work, gmail, hotmail. They didn't update fast enough. Then Facebook became the best distraction from the constant pain.
Despite the near constant updating found in Facebook, I would actually go through it constantly enough that at times, it wouldn't update. There wouldn't be a single change when I'd hit refresh as I'd seen everything in my newsfeed already. Maybe this is why I started friending people I barely know, instead of keeping it to just close friends and family. I just need something to distract me. TV is not usually enough, and movies don't generally distract enough either. Facebook for a time was just enough, but only for so long.
What's resulted, however, is the bad habit that, when I'm feeling overly emotional or anxious, I just go to Facebook and scroll, and scroll, and scroll. It's become a habit that needs to be broken, and as much as Ryan would tease me about my Facebook addiction, I never really saw it as that until a friend posted on Facebook recently, "What am I looking for?" This is honestly one of the best questions I've seen as of late, and it's one I am asking myself a lot of the time when I find myself turning to Facebook. Because, of course, I still use it as a distraction. In reality, it's just a major time suck that keeps me from being productive.
These days I am in a better place both mentally and emotionally, and yet the habit persists. Even when an article pops up that sounds interesting, I simply open it and save it for later. And yet, I miss reading. Like whole articles and books. So why don't I just read? Or even sew, or sketch, or paint? These are all things I generally feel I don't have time for, and yet, there's always time for scrolling through Facebook. There's always time to be distracted, even from the anxiety that has now developed. It's funny, too, because anxiety gives me nervous energy that makes me need to DO something, and there are most definitely better avenues for using this energy than scrolling through Facebook.
As my grief journey morphs and I find myself in better places, better moods even, Facebook is becoming something that I don't need any more. It's just a matter of breaking the bad habit and moving forward with better ways to distract myself. More productive ways that are fulfilling more so than distracting. Attempting to fill the void at least feels better than just trying to distract myself from focusing on it. It will never go away, so I guess there's a lot of filling to do over the course of the rest of my life, however long that may be. And there are so many productive ways to fill it that benefit others first and not myself.
I can't imagine a better way to distract myself. My family, my friends, and helping strangers are the best distractions to the ever present pain that is the loss of Korbin, so my time is best spent with them and helping others.
Because I got a lotta love to give.