90. detox / retox

I dipped my toe back in the (cess)pool of social media, thinking it would be harmless.

It was, and it wasn’t. 

It was kind of like deciding it would be okay to take a risk with, you know, just the tip.

Just a little login, a little story, a little scroll, a little taste. 

It felt like the energy of when I’ve worked hard to give up a behavior pattern, substance, or vice and then, after much build up, decided to return to it. You know, like detox / retox.

The big hullabaloo about popping a bottle after a period of time on the wagon. It seems like maybe it’s going to be exciting and great and so much fun but then it’s just… meh. The same old initial intoxication followed by fatigue, wondering where the time (and maybe money) went, and a mild regret that I could have just done… well, anything else. 

I mean, nothing bad happened. I didn’t suddenly get sucked into a dramatic whirlpool vortex of scrolling addiction, or go off the deep end of impulse shopping, or find myself engaged in cyberbullying with a bunch of tween trolls. 

But, nothing really good happened, either. I mean, I didn’t notice a substantial difference in how I felt jumping back into the realm of double-tapped hearts and dopamine-dripping DMs. There was no welcome back committee or profound realizations about how much I’ve grown or changed from taking a 100 day sabbatical. 

It’s a “meh,” and a halfhearted shrug. 

The biggest realization was that my presence there is, for anyone but me, inconsequential. 

So where does that leave me? Spring equinox was the finish line, the deadline, the first goal. It was the waypoint and destination to check in and evaluate the power of this transformative process. To be honest, most of what I suspected about where I’d find myself at this juncture was correct. 

Client leads have slowed down, and my ‘off social media’ marketing strategies haven’t quite kicked into high gear yet, which means income has slowed down, too, and frankly, there is a real life necessity to address that at some point. 

I feel less “important,” but actually that feeling is really nice - it can be incredibly liberating to stop centering oneself in the navel-gazing way that social media emphasizes, in which we are constantly looking at our reflected image, analyzing our own written tone, and creating a ‘branded’ design to share recycled thoughts and images with the world. 

It’s been restorative and healing on multiple levels to retreat to my digital witch hut at the edge of the forest, and winter there. It nourished me in ways I knew I needed, but wondered if I’d actually find. 

But I’m no longer ensconced in my sweet shanty, because winter has thawed and spring is upon us. I decided to get out of my hut and go for a walk, and I found on the far side of the forest a vast meadow of spring wildflowers, where just this week, the sun finally showed its face.

Then I was like “omg, I look so cute in these wildflowers, I should put them on Instagram.” 

Oh my, how the mighty have fallen. Oh my, old habits die hard.

I sat outside today - basked, really, and it was glorious. Then I thought about how nice the light was, and felt a twinge of obligation to capture the golden glow in some B-roll video that Christelle can use to make reels. Dutifully, I recorded it (I was, after all, also having a good hair day), but after a few minutes of looking at myself in the camera, trying to get the just-right angle for the lens flare (“girls love lens flare,” says Brent), I noticed that instead of feeling recharged from the early afternoon sunlight, I felt tired, a little more anxious, and like I’d just wasted ten minutes of my life. 

I saw this quote the other day about the relationship between our phones (screens, perhaps, but especially phones and apps) and brain function from neuroscientist TJ Powers, whose research is focused on tech addiction and human disconnection: 

We’re living in dopamine land, obsessed with our phones. This is lowering our oxytocin levels which is a leading cause of modern anxiety. Dopamine now increases hundreds of times a day, in every moment we interact with our phone, causing us to become unbelievably addicted to these devices.

This addiction is making real life connections harder to achieve; for example, you might choose to scroll your phone in bed (dopamine) instead of cuddling and chatting to your partner (oxytocin). Every time we choose dopamine over oxytocin, our oxytocin levels drop. Low oxytocin levels cause our brains to feel anxious, fearful, and restless.

To create a calm and happy brain, we must start reprioritizing oxytocin. This means more physical touch and active listening; it means asking better questions and giving more compliments. We must escape this dopamine land and return to an oxytocin oasis, where slower, phone-free, loving moments become our favorite form of relaxation.

I read the quote and was like, dude knows what’s up. But guess where I read it? My brief foray back on Instagram. Oh, the irony.

Dude is right though, and the oxytocin oasis he mentions is real, too. It’s available, and it’s not that far away, if we choose it.

I’d wondered - 
if this project would bring me closer to my kids and partner (it did)
if it would support my overall creativity (it did)
if I would find more spaciousness in each day for exercise, breathwork, meditation (I did)
if I would feel generally more happy and less anxious (I did)
if I would happily connect to people via email (I did)
if I’d have more space for collaboration and guest teaching (I did)
if I’d share my voice with more truth and ownership (I did)
if my time in nature would be in deeper presence (it is)
and if my brain would feel stronger (it does. 

So, I guess what I’m saying is, this project is worthwhile. It deserves a double down, another 90 days, a second season of devotion, a curious exploration of what fruit may come from spring turning to summer. 

So, I’m recommitting - but with a bit more fluidity, flexibility, and grace - because it turns out, if you just straight up ignore people on social media, while running a business that has been (almost entirely) reliant on social media for a decade, it gets hard to pay the bills. 

I’ll be writing - not every day, but I am staying the 365 day course, because this space of art and heart has nourished, awakened, and enlivened something in me that seems to be feeding everything else. 

In this space, I don’t have to wear a particular hat of a business coach, spiritual counselor, astrologer, medicine keeper, retreat guide, teacher, healer, mystic, creative, money-maker, cookie-baker, booty-shaker, knowledge-faker, attention-taker.

I don’t have to have all the answers or have it together. 

I’ll be writing - but I’ll also be letting my creative channel flow through social media with hopes that enough sustenance will reach me to let me romp through spring and into summer in my oxytocin oasis, to explore where the babbling brook near my witch hut meadow leads me on a hot summer day.

In this time, I’ve realized that I spent too many years having conversations with humans in the room while my eyes were glued to a screen, and the prolonged loving gaze of my beautiful boys has flooded my body with remembrance that I want to be HERE, where my body is, where my heart is beating, where my feet are planted. So I’ll soften my rigidity, my all-or-nothing, to make space for possibility to flow. 

I’ll be writing - but I’ll also be asking for help, because to nourish my art, and to nourish our hearts, I need to be nourished, too. 

April 1, I’ll share an evolution of the Antisocial Social Club newsletter - a tiered subscription in which you can just keep receiving, because heart and art are free

OR

for the low low price of just buy me a fucking latte, you’ll be a patron of this great art, and I’ll be encouraged to continue this whimsical and mildly unhinged foray into the question plaguing me since I first picked up a crayon:

Am I maybe, actually, genuinely… a writer?

P.S. If you didn’t register to come hang out this Friday and be mildly unhinged in great company, it’s not too late to join us. Expect a group of moderately antisocial creatives, exhausted empaths and makeshift modern mystics who aren’t totally sure what the fuck we are doing with our lives. There’s usually laughter, and always crying. I mean, if that’s not a good time, I don’t know what is. 

Sign up here: 🌼 Antisocial Social Club Spring Gathering March 28 🌼