This is not a specific scene or scenario, but one that has happened many many times. I am at a restaurant, not alone, but one other person is there. They excuse themselves, to go to the bathroom, to pay, whatever. I don’t care. I have already taken my phone out for a little scroll.
It is a weekday morning. I am standing at the train platform. It is quiet. It is 7am. 99% of people has buried themselves in their phone, half with headphones on. It sounds like I counted, and these are accurate numbers, but they’re not. Trust me, I didn’t count. I judged, hard. As if I am better than them – I’m not.
It is a new year (hello 2026) — and all I want this year is not to be a better person, but to give myself space. I like to call it ‘empty space’. Space for thoughts to wander, for nothing, really. Just emptiness. Yet that is precisely what you need for sparks to happen, for your brain to process, to daydream, to connect, to create, to write. To be someone who is occasionally bored.
A sudden realisation. I think about how I bombard myself, day in day out, hour by hour, minute after minute, with little cluster bombs of content. And it is a little scary. Content content content. Content fatigue, or content numbness by now?
There are daily podcasts, weekly podcasts, stories, reels1, YouTube, YouTube Shorts, streaming platforms full of binge-worthy distractions2, various internetforums – they all scream: more more more! And sometimes it seems that the only thing AI is good for, is to give us even more and more and more content.
but I am not content
discontent, I feel it
building in
my bones
my brain
The self-bombardment feels endless. I want to be caught up. With the news, the world, maybe my friends. I never feel fully caught up, always lacking, no matter how many daily news podcasts I subscribe to. I cannot catch up.
Though I still have the feeling that I need to, that I should know what’s really happening. How to know what’s really happening?3
The confused John Travolta GIF phenomenon indicates that it has become almost impossible to extract a sensible perception of what is really going on from the aggregation of information/data that constitutes the present. As Mr. Baudrillard once noted “One cannot at the same time grasp the real and its sign: we shall never again master the two simultaneously.” This particular GIF phenomenon with Travolta simply alienated is a clear hint that this idea has finally entered the popular imagination, and this is a positive sign, because it means that we perhaps can start loosening our expectations regarding the real and begin thinking what reality should be rather than what it is as a manifest entity. — Bassam El Baroni, in: Francis McKee, How to know what’s really happening?
are we to blame?
why do we keep
blaming ourselves?
and not those
who made the slot machines
I recently went on a heavy unsubscribe spree. I “suffer” from a completionist mindset: I should listen to all my news podcasts of the week, important things are happening. I should finish listening to all the episodes I start. I should read all the newsletters in my inbox, all the Substack articles I’ve saved.
Things I unsubscribed from: short daily news podcasts4, chatty chat show podcasts, podcasts that are too unfocused, that stay too shallow, and all yet take 1 or 2 hours of your time (where is the art of the short form in podcast land — I guess it would require way more editing?), (reality) tv recap/discussion podcasts (I actually don’t really need to know that much about this season’s reality tv contestants). A lot of newsletters, some substacks. In short, enjoyment over aspirational subscribes.
Earlier this week, it’s a Monday morning, and I lose myself in reels. Despite my intentions, my resolutions, to have a good start this week. Instead of getting myself to work early. The last reel I watch is a podcast excerpt, on how scrolling is like dementia, or could give us all dementia later in life. I swipe the app away.
On the way to work, I finally finish my poetry class homework, on the tram.
Poem excerpt (choppily translated from Dutch):
I’ve spent an hour being here
but I can’t remember what I’ve seen
I remember, my mother’s aunt
we’re in the kitchen
cups of coffee on the table
’this was a really lovely visit,
but I know that soon I won’t remember
that you stopped by’
It’s a new year, and all I want is more. More ‘empty space’.
Sit in silence, at the restaurant table, look around.
Wait for my train, and to be a little bored.