Everything that makes my life easier, simpler, and more efficient is slowly killing me. I can feel my insides being carved out as I turn from one easy piece of entertainment to the next. Every screen is two clicks away from the entrapping webs of YouTube or Reddit, and the brief moments when I lift my head up and realize where I am and what I’ve been doing for the past hour creates this small trickle of shame that never quite builds up enough to make me stop what I’m doing.

I can blame this all I want on modern social media or the endless scrolling algorithms that have become the default, but the internet has had hits hooks in me since the days of primitive clickbait titles. While Buzzfeed was the poster child for “X Ys that will make you Z,” Cracked was my drug of choice in high school. Cracked would publish six articles a day, and I would read each one, and then I would click through to the suggested articles. I would read for so long that I had to frequently shift my dad’s work laptop so the heat build-up wouldn’t burn my leg hair off.

Whether it has been Twitter, Cracked, Instagram, TVTropes, Imgur, or even Wikipedia, the simple efficiency of having another link ready for you to click on has made the internet the place where my brain goes to die. Reddit has been the primary gremlin clinging to my gray matter for the past decade and change. Other time sinks have come and gone, but Reddit’s sheer tonnage of bullshit has been impossible to overthrow. And that bullshit simply never stops flowing. Even as you know on a cognitive level that it has to be finite, there will never be a bullshit shortage as long as everyone contributes to the pile.

Short form content of any sort already did enough to wreck my attention span, but the amount of everything everywhere has trained me to assess dozens of posts for their engagement value in under a second. I’ve caught myself allowing my eyes to drift across a book’s page to catch out key words before I get to them, as if I might decide whether or not the next paragraph is worthy of my attention. I’ve developed the need to ensure that any lack, any iota of boredom, is filled immediately.

Quitting isn’t really something I’ve been very good at. I’ve quit biting the hanging skin around my nails at least twice a year since I was in grade school, and I’m currently relapsing as I type. But the way I used to shred my palms and fingers, digging my teeth into any stretch of skin that I convinced myself wouldn’t bleed, is largely gone. So, just as I can now shake hands with a stranger without worrying about how ragged my palm will feel against theirs, I think I can live with quitting Reddit and any other shit-shoveling apps over and over again if it means that I’m not cured, but still better off.

My hope is that the bullshit will dry out, and then be swept away like loose topsoil. It will need to be replaced. Last night, I read the first 50 pages of On Writing by Stephen King. I can’t remember a single Reddit post I read yesterday, but I can remember the pain he felt at the doctor’s as they lanced his eardrum, and I can remember the way I forgot I was tired in bed, and had to force myself to put the book aside. I remember starting to read it in high school and not jiving with it. I remember that I told myself to text my friend who loaned it to me all those years ago that I’m finally reading it. These memories will stick around. They’re a part of the experiences of my life that have become bedrock. I don’t believe that it’s possible for me to write anything that will be remembered by anybody if my brain is filled with sand. Let it blow away, and then I can finally do something with this plot of land.