(dis)connection
On protection and rest.
Are you as fine as I am with eight days to Election Day? Everything is totally fine, if you consider staring down the potential end to a functioning democracy and any progress that’s been made on equal rights for anyone who isn’t a hetero white dude.
Take care of yourselves, my people. I’m trying to not live-track polling (lotta good that did in 2016) and internet chatter and news stories this week, but of course they invariably slip through, and then I usually just sit in shock that there’s even a conversation that involves the GOP candidate for president. He has zero policies and he’s a horrible person who wants to do horrible things with his power. I could make the list longer, but I’m not actually here to write about him, and I don’t want to waste my words or my time on that blowhard.
What I am here to write about, is the concept of protection—both now and after the election, but also in general. It seems that the default mode for most of us is online, connected, drinking from the firehose that is our 24/7 access to information. We were opted in, and now we are having to work really hard to opt back out. Even if I want to do the bare minimum (what even is that? Checking email only three times a day? Once a week? When would my life start actually changing?), I can’t be naive and think that I can exist in this world as it is, without some time being spent online. It’s where I work, it’s where I connect with my actual friends as well as see what’s going on in the world. I send these words to you, reader, not by post or pigeon, but because you have chosen to be linked to me electronically, and I have chosen to connect with you in this way.
I have come a long way in being more mindful when it comes to using technology. Keeping my phone out of my bedroom (you all, they sell these things called alarm clocks that aren’t connected to the internet and that just tell time and scream at you at the designated time you tell it to, and some of them even do so with a gentle light and nature sounds). Protecting my mornings so that I can meditate and take the dog to the beach before I let anything from the outside world hit my brain. Logging out of email to focus on deep work. Using blockers and timers on my phone to limit the apps I have access to. Setting aside time on my calendar for email, for reading all those saved emails or open tabs. Unsubscribing from newsletters I no longer read or find useful. These all, annoyingly, seem to work for me.
And I’ve also learned that one of the first signs I’m overwhelmed and fearful is that I find myself scrolling through whatever and suddenly realize 30 minutes has gone by. That I’ve checked my email 27 times since breakfast. That I’m telling myself I need to sort through all my unread emails from mailing lists I’m on, right now—not to read them now but to save the ones I want to read later and then have them trail to the end of my mailbox where I find them a month or two later and delete them, unread, and my life seems to have been okay without reading it.
What I’m trying to do, in that case, is not to tell myself that I’m such a lazy loser who wasted all this time and ugh why can’t I just have more will power. I am trying to notice—huh, it’s seeming really easy for me to scroll through Instagram right now without thinking—and be curious—huh, I wonder what’s going on, what am I avoiding?
And if I talk back, saying “I’m tired, I need a break, I’m just resting,” to understand that I’m basically eating ice cream and calling it a meal. Not awful every now and then (kind of my dream, to be honest), but I’m not actually nourishing myself with what I need to stay alive. Even choosing to watch a mindless tv show is better than the mindless scrolling, because it’s just that: a choice.
Resting looks like staring at the ceiling with some music playing, not sticking a screen in front of my face.
What are your go-to ways of protecting your brain, your time, your rest? How do you nourish yourself?
Thanks for verbalizing exactly how I feel.
After much doomscrolling, I deleted instagram from my phone the other day. My resting heart rate has been lower since.
Hooray! Well said.