messy writing and momentum

I find that scrolling too much on my phone these days adversely affects my ability to process — and just sit with — information. It's like my brain is constantly being pushed to the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing, and I can't center or ground myself in any particular thought. In some ways it's like experiencing a panic attack that's preventing me from being at rest with myself.

This isn't a novel experience, and people have talked about this at length for over a decade now. But it feels a lot worse for me these days, and it's been really getting in the way of my daily functioning, which is... really worrisome to say the least.

As a PhD candidate, I spend a good amount of time writing; or well, I should, but these days I've been really neglecting that. And as always, when I don't write, it feels like the particular parts of my brain that specialize in writing start to atrophy, like when you stop going to the gym and stop working out certain muscles. I'm in that sort of rut right now. I can't seem to piece together words the way I want to, and it frustrates me. Some might just call this writer's block, but for me, I think there's an additional sense of panic, as if I've lost the ability to do something entirely and I have to re-learn it.

Sometimes when I step away from writing for too long, and end up scrolling too much, it feels like I'm literally losing a part of my brain and replacing it with junk. Writing isn't like riding the idiomatic bike, it's something that I feel like I have to re-learn over and over again. Right now I have quite a few papers I need to be working on and revising, but I can't seem to get myself to sit down and look at them. Or, when I do, the words are like gibberish on the page, like inscrutable symbols put together by a different entity altogether. (You can't tell I'm struggling to write when I start throwing around odd, kind of stiff phrases that use somewhat big words here and there, as if I'm trying to parrot an academic, but not really doing it in a convincing manner.)

Part of trying to get back on the bicycle of writing is simply to start writing, even if the words that come onto the page are ill-fitting and out of place. Folks talk about a "shitty first draft," but before I can even get there, I just need to engage in messy writing that doesn't even engage with the topic I'm trying to write about, because my brain can't even process that subject just yet. This is the place or the mode from which I'm writing this post. But it's just so frustrating. I want to be able to just get to my writing without going through this whole song and dance each time. I'm so tired. It makes me so anxious. I constantly carry this fear that I'm going to simply forget how to do basic tasks, or even be myself, at times. Is this something y'all experience as well? Do you often wake up and feel like you're a different person? Does it feel like there are parts of you and your brain that you simply can't access anymore? Because these days it feels like it's happening more and more.