these habits might actually be rotting my brain

yes, I wrote this after switching between TikTok and Twitter for an hour

I’ve been trying to do that thing where people plan their day and stick to it; lots of those self-help folks have proven that it works. My sister works really well with it, but for some reason, I can’t seem to figure it out for myself. All I do is write it down, but I never come back to tick the box. Most times, I do 80% of what I wrote down, but never 100%. Today, I woke up with a to-do list, a plan on how I wanted my day to go. I wrote it down in my Notes app so I’d have some direction. And just like every other day, I bet 70% that it wouldn’t go as I’d written it.

Do I need to be more disciplined, or do I say fuck it and just go on with life without a fixed plan? I’d say the former, because self-discipline helps in the long run. So maybe all I need to do is practice harder until I perfect it.

I read a Substack post yesterday (can’t remember which exactly) about how feeding your brain unhelpful things makes it rot faster. I knew they were right, but I wasn’t ready to accept that thought because I love feeding my brain fun things, which, after this morning, I now believe might be rotting my brain faster than I thought. In the wake of the morning, after meditating (been doing this for a while now, it softens my mind and clears my head before the day starts; would highly recommend it), journaling, and replying to all messages, I read two Substack posts I’d been putting off for a while. I got motivated to write on a certain topic, which would’ve been successful if I didn’t make the mistake of opening Twitter and stumbling on a post that pissed me off. Wish I had stopped there, but I kept diving in, reading replies I agreed with and ones I didn’t. By the time I was done, I had forgotten all about what I read on Substack and what exactly I wanted to write. I had replaced that memory with something my past self would’ve termed as “interesting,” but it’s anything but that. It’s destructive.

I spent a few minutes trying to trace back my steps, even went back to reread the Substack post or any post from the writer, but it was all gone. My brain was now filled with that tweet I saw that had pissed me off.

Now that I remember, it was actually not a Substack post—but a self-help podcast on finding yourself and feeding your body only good things.

This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve felt my brain deteriorating after doomscrolling on Twitter or any of the other social media apps. Hell, I even tried deactivating last week, only to reactivate three days later. It has become an addiction. An obsession. An unhealthy one, too. One that isn’t giving me any pleasure, but instead, transporting my brain farther into the void.

I spend my time, days even, scrambling through my head, digesting everything I’ve seen on the internet, dissecting them one by one:

Why are people so stupid.
Why does the government acts the way it does.
What did Damson Idris have for breakfast.
What’s the update on the Chinese market going around on TikTok.
Why aren’t those famous couple in each other’s videos anymore.
What’s Trump plan with this tariffs he’s throwing around.
Who’s winning the tariff war between China and the US.

Just so many thoughts swimming all around my head. And while that’s fine because it keeps me updated on what’s going on in the world, it’s basically doing just that—keeping me updated. Not helping me in any way.

It’s the phone. It’s really the damn phones.

Also, I did go back because of my new upcoming publication, which I’m launching soon. Scene & Heard. How do I write about the news when I can’t see the news? (I’ll appreciate any other alternative that doesn’t require me to doomscroll on Twitter.)

I’ve been doing this thing recently where I try not to overthink, which somehow leads me to overthink why I shouldn’t overthink. It’s the reason why I can’t get back on YouTube yet. It’s why I struggled a lot while I was on YouTube. I overthink everything, down to what angle would be perfect, what I should and shouldn’t say. Am I doing too much? Or too little? Sometimes I just go ahead and film when I can’t bring myself to stop overthinking. And I end up never liking it. Overthinking has held me back a lot. And I’m beginning to realize that if I don’t comb it out, if I don’t put it in its place, it’s going to keep holding me back until I’m 50 and old. And nowhere in life. (God forbid)

So, where does that leave me and all the things I want to do and accomplish?

Lately, I’ve been working on a short story, one that requires a lot of thinking and researching, and while I’ve done all that. I still can’t bring myself to write it without trying to make it perfect, even on the first draft. It wouldn’t be my first time writing a story, but it would be my first time writing one as an adult. I wrote a lot of stories in my teenage years, ones my friends and family genuinely enjoyed, ones that eventually led me to fall in love with writing. And my career as a writer. Because if I can bring joy to my readers, what’s stopping me from going down that path?

But I never knew that writing as an adult came with so many mental expenses.

The struggle to be perfect, even on the first draft.
The struggle to hit that publish button when I’m done.
The struggle to not crave my reader’s attention and criticism (the good kind).
The struggle to not compare myself with other writers, and to convince myself that everyone is great in their own way.

I have an obsession with following the expected process… the precise procedure. I do it while cooking, cleaning, even when taking a walk. I stick to the route I mentally committed to, not the shortcut that suddenly appears out of nowhere.

I take pride in being a devout disciple of routine.

So, it became a struggle when I researched and discovered that I don’t need to go chapter by chapter; I just need to write as it comes. That it’s okay to write the 14th chapter even when the first chapter isn’t ready or written at all. That realization left me destabilized for days. And I mean that, in the most dramatic way possible.

But I do have to write, because if I don’t, it’ll remain just an idea in my head. Not a story. Not a published story.

I’m learning to push back against the writer’s status quo, the one we all learned in English class, the one we read in those beginner writing books:

Start every sentence with a capital letter.
Your titles must be bold and engaging.
All your “i”s must be uppercase.
Never start a sentence with “but.”
Don’t do this. Don’t do that.

I’m learning to unlearn all of that. Because who made the rules?

Actually, I’ve been seeing a lot of writers break those rules lately, and it didn’t stop them from gaining thousands of readers or keeping their work published.

People love it. And honestly, it’s slowly becoming the norm.

Anyway, that’s all from my restless little brain today.

Catch you in the next mental spiral.

Just so you know, before I edited and finally published this, I completely zoned out and somehow ended up on Twitter, doomscrolling through a rage-bait tweet designed to spark an online war between Nigerians and South Africans.

Yeah, I need help.

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