…which makes it a good time to start or change something! Although, perhaps you never really need an excuse for that. Still, it’s lovely to make sense of coincidences, isn’t it?
My name is Miko. I’m a rather useless 25 year-old at this point, and I’ve just seen a YouTube video that shed light on why I do certain stupid things I do, why I don’t do other, admittedly less stupid things, and what I could do about that. It turns out that it all has a lot to do with a neurotransmitter called dopamine. Here’s the video:
“So you’re saying that most, if not all of my excitement-seeking behavior, including playing video games, watching online videos or whole TV series, binge-eating, and even journalling or devouring self-help content has been due to a chemical conditioning of my brain?”
“Yes.”
“And that I could ‘reset’ my brain by limiting or completely cutting out certain kinds of behavior, so that it’s easier to enjoy work and live a meaningful life?”
“Yep.”
“Okay, I’m in.”
This is pretty much the conversation that took place in my head. Having struggled with motivation for a while now, I suppose this is the “why” I’ve been searching for, and it’s just in time, too: there’s no way in hell I’m going to let some chemical decide the course of my life; that’s just weak.
Surprisingly, this “why” is not defined by something to strive for in the future, something I want — quite the opposite. And in spite of having thought something along similar lines before, I never quite saw through, up until today, just how much this dopamine-baseline-mechanism permeates every area of my life. For instance, I tried quitting video games altogether a few times with some success, but didn’t see that I was replacing that with other excitement-seeking behaviors almost immediately, which prevented me from getting any real results. The least conspicuous of those behaviors was perhaps obsessive thinking and journaling, coming up with and analyzing all kinds of self-help ideas and theories, which effectively kept me in my mind and still out of touch with my feelings. I got fixated on singular behaviors and missed the broader underlying pattern. Bummer, eh?
Then I thought: “OK, great. But what shall I do with my free time now? I can double down on improving my guitar game and singing, sure. Maybe I’ll write more music. Or, hey, why not also start a blog to keep myself on track with this journey and share any potential insights?” So here I am, and if you’re reading this – here we are.
Welcome! This isn’t going to be easy so wish me luck and let’s see what happens next.
Miko's Musings 
Great post 🙂
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