The Attention Wars: Why Creative Time Is Now Contraband

Try to read a page. The phone rings.

Try to read a page. The courier buzzes.

Try to read a page.

This is ping culture: the constant barrage of notifications, interruptions, and demands that fragment our attention into unusable pieces.

Each interruption creates ripples, like stones thrown into still water. Brief distractions disturb not just that moment, but the entire hour that follows—especially when you're creating rather than consuming.

Days could stretch out like an uninterrupted blank canvas to pursue your life's passions. Instead, we're left carving out what I call “sacred blocks”: one hour here, two hours there—if you're lucky. Two hours actually feel quite grand. On certain days, I steal five minutes in the quietest bathroom to write. Crumbs, but enough to keep going.

This is by design: the system—our collective ego, or modern society itself, regardless of political or cultural configurations—engineers this endless loop of alienation.

It's Not Your Fault: The Systemic Drain

There's something questionable about a system that forces you to trade creative energy for survival. And it gets perverted when it makes you feel guilty for resenting the transaction. It's on you! You don't know how to manage your time! You don't know how to manage your mental health!

This isn't about everyone feeling tired. It's about spiritual exhaustion from having your energy juiced, redirected, and suppressed. Even mocked: “You should have more hobbies, friends, and smiles!”

The issue isn’t the quantity of time—it’s the quality. What happens when your prime waking hours are consumed by the endless churn of profit-maximization? What is left for you? Of you?

In this reality, every creative act becomes an act of rebellion. Here's how you can wage your small, private resistance.

Creative Contraband: A Rebellion Against Distraction

Over the past year and a half, I’ve taken 30,000 raw street photographs, written 21 mini-essays, and built a polished website. I’ve done this in the margins—stolen moments between obligations, stolen hours from sleep. Why? Maybe to prove I won’t give up. But when we must steal time to pursue our lives, aren’t we already imprisoned?

I remember sitting at lunch years ago with a TV director from a European broadcaster. It was a meeting arranged to help guide my career choices. What stays with me isn't his advice about the industry or production techniques. Instead, I recall the moment he looked down at his plate and muttered, “They take away any hope and desire to do anything meaningful.”

Bummer. I felt that pain instantly. Later, I'd spend eight years at that same company. Even while being in charge of my own radio show for a couple of years, I experienced firsthand what he meant. How the process takes the pulp, how it pulls you away from genuine creative work for the sake of engaging domesticated and rotted audiences. Until you're left with the juiced-out skin. I understood how his melodrama wasn't melodrama at all.

His words haunt me because in a world designed to consume creativity, every meaningful creation becomes an act of resistance.

Why Creating Anything Meaningful is Now an Act of Resistance

Most people abandon any passion in favor of what some call “rotting:” The slow death of the spirit in front of video streaming and games (here's how to beat that.) They might be the wise ones, restoring energy to deal with what they're forced to deal with.

But you should know that your exhaustion is not a moral failing: it's a system working as intended. The current social contract does not allow for all these things–the pursuit of decent income, passions, and restoration.

This world fragments attention into unusable pieces, then blames us for not assembling them properly.

I don’t know if there’s anything to do about it. The only thing you can do now is backsteal as many pockets of time as you can for yourself. To keep the spark alive.

Make sure you get enough time back to protect what matters most. I’m not going to share an inspirational list on how to “reclaim your time.” Instead, just ask yourself this: Who deserves your best energy?

Save that for yourself.

This is the most realistic thing you can do beyond just bitching. Yes, the constant need to engineer pockets of creativity from a routine designed to consume them is exhausting.

But the spark must remain, even though at times it’s almost vanished.

Sometimes, we must even turn off the lights to see it. It's 99.99% extinguished. Yet, there's a 0.01 periodic chance–infinite in its periodic nature–that something meaningful emerges. That it may be revived through oxygen. That it may join others and thrive, and grow.

Do not resign to give up what makes you happy. And don't believe that time management is the answer—it's part of the problem.

Segmenting time destroys its most valuable quality: flow. That 0.01% spark survives not because we've managed our calendar better, but because we've learned to protect what matters.

The next time someone suggests better time management as the solution, remember: your exhaustion isn't a personal failing. It's what happens when ping culture treats attention as a resource to be mined rather than a capacity to be nurtured.

Keep your spark alive however you can. The quality of time matters more than its quantity, and no calendar app can fix that fundamental truth. Only your choice, and your constant attention, will.

P.S. vord, on Tildes.net, posted on this article’s discussion thread about Nine Inch Nail's Year Zero. “A dystopian sci-fi concept album taking place starting in the year 2022.” He mentions that “this blog post really hammers home the core message of the resistance.”

Art is Resistance
Here is one thing that the government wants you to forget
You have a voice
How are you going to use it?
Art is witness
Speak the truth
Art is commmunity
You will be heard
Art is action without violence
Art changes hearts without breaking bodies
You Can Act