For example, when I was a kid, I was to reading books: crumpling into a sofa or lying down on the carpet (we were a low-budget family when I was a kid) and running my fingers through the smooth pages, I would devour stories as a youth while getting a dopamine hit every time I flipped a page, that swish of the page turning similar to the ringing of a slot machine at the casino, encouraging me to continue.
In my 20's, I went through a few different phases of addiction where I was constantly thinking about a specific goal and therefore trying to fill my brain as much as possible with it all the time: first it was dodgeball, which coincided with learning Japanese, then once I had made some money it turned into the stock market.......these were things that my mind turned to each time I got bored, when I was in the car and had nothing else to think about, I would just naturally turn to turning on a Japanese podcast, or thinking about the previous night's intense dodgeball match, or listening to Jim Cramer or a stock market podcast. These were all self-sustaining addictions: The more I participated in them, the better I got at it. (Compare to this to some bad addictions, like drugs, where the more you use them, the worse of a high you get, and you need more and more just to feel the same thing, thus needing more and more and developing a dependency). I don't think I ever developed a "dependency" in any of my addictions, but I did feel like it'd be a shame to stop since I hadn't reached the end goal, so everything I'd done up to that point would be wasted if I didn't keep going. It also felt powerful to develop new skills, like I was going on new adventures. A good gauge of if something is an addiction: If when you wake up, the first thing you think about is that thing. I've done my best to wean off fantasy baseball, which is a constant bane on my existence, since games can start as early as 12PM EST and be on continuously until 1AM the next morning. And it's EVERY SINGLE DAY. I even moved to the East Coast to make the games start later so I'd have more time in the morning with a fresh brain to absorb other information.
Other signs of addiction: constantly needing to check or get a fresh "hit" of it. This of course applies for everyone and their cell phones, but I found myself doing everything that's described in "The Social Dilemma," the Netflix documentary about the negative effects of social media: my fingers just naturally click on "Facebook" or "Youtube" without thinking, hoping for the next hit of an incendiary message or update of a Youtube channel I'm subscribed too. I've tried to diverget that subconcious itch to check the next message by making the first 2 Safari tabs the Korean-English dictionary (so I can check the next Korean word) and the J Archive, because I don't mind learning a new fact or three every time I check my phone, and I don't get bored by it. It's like my 10-year-old self opening up a new book from the library again, turning through pages of trivia to test myself and feel smarter, which fuels the efficiency freak in me (and productivity disciplanarian in me) to focus on that one task at the expense of all others (including hopefully unhealthy addictions). It's a battle of addictions, and as the Chairman of Robert's Brain Activities I have to enact policies that ensure we get the most production out of my addictive tendencies.
I tried to explain this idea of a healthy addiction to my sister, to not much avail. A shrug and a comment to brush me off, as I've become what teachers must feel like: just a nag whose words of advice can just be ignored. It's understandable, when I was 25 I probably wouldn't have followed anyone's advice; I was headstrong and thought I had everything figured out, thus living out the phrase "youth is wasted on the young." And really, I can't preach too much if I'm guilty of the same sin of checking my phone all the time. Maybe we will one day go through an internet detox session together, or a "negative-to-positive addiction" session could do the trick.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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