What’s Consuming You?

This is something that's been sitting in my head for a while now. Not one specific day — just a thought that kept coming back, usually right after I'd catch myself somewhere I hadn't quite meant to be. Thirty minutes into scrolling when I'd picked up my phone “for a second.” Holding something I'd just bought that I didn't actually need.

The comparison that kept surfacing for me was the food chain. We usually think of it simply — something eats something else, and at the top of it, nothing eats us. We assume that means we're in control. But that's only true physically. There's another version of it, less visible and, I'd argue, more relevant. Nothing's eating my body in this one. But plenty of things are quietly eating my time, my attention, my mental space.

An ordinary day is enough to see it. I pick up my phone for a minute and it turns into thirty. I buy something I didn't really need, it feels good for a while, then it fades. I drift from one thing to the next without really noticing where the time went. None of it looks wrong in isolation. But over time, something shifts — I'm not choosing anymore, I'm reacting.

That's the new food chain, as far as I can tell. Not physical. Behavioral. Constant scrolling. Endless consumption. The need to stay busy. The need to keep up. None of it feels like much on its own. Together, it starts taking over — and slowly, without quite noticing when it happened, I go from being in control to being consumed.

I don't think this means quitting everything. I'm not trying to give up my phone or stop buying things I actually want. What I've started doing instead is asking, every so often: what's taking more from me than it's giving? Just asking that honestly tends to change things. Once I can actually see it, I pull back — not by force, just because I'm paying attention again.

For me, that's looked like putting the phone down a little earlier. Sitting with something instead of reaching for a distraction. Choosing what actually matters to me in the moment, instead of whatever's easiest to reach for.

It's not really about fighting everything happening around me. It's about not handing it full control. Because somewhere along the way, I think the real question stopped being “what am I consuming?” and started being “what is consuming me?”