3. hungover

Don’t talk about it, be about it.

These wise words from my husband echo in my ears as I sit in a quiet house on a Sunday morning, on the last full moon of the calendar year. 

Full moon in Gemini, the sign of communication. Full moons are about closure, endings, releasing, letting go, harvest, completion, and fulfillment. 

Contemplating this project, whatever it’s called, “a year without a phone,” or “the antisocial social project,” is like putting a bandaid on a shark bite. By which I mean, thinking about it, talking about it, planning it, filling a Google drive folder of notes on it…

None of these things are actually doing it. 

And the sooner I do it, the sooner I can stop talking about it, thinking about it, wondering, obsessing, driving myself crazy with the will-I-or-won’t-I suspense. The drama. 

Oh! But I think it’s the drama that I’m so attached to, and perhaps what I am afraid of losing. If I don’t get to play dramatically with my own self importance on the stage of social media, then I am merely an actor with no audience, and who will celebrate my theatrics? Who will applaud my performance? 

Ew. Eye roll.

But also, okay, because it’s okay to want to be seen. Both at a deep human level, like intimacy, and at a broad social level, like status. It’s okay to want that. 

But at what cost? If it costs you the intimacy with yourself, your children, partner, wild nature, and spirit, it’s certainly not worth it. 

Look, we need to have a real cut-the-shit moment here: it’s not a big fucking deal if you take some time without the apps. Just try it, see what happens. Don’t give a fuck if people engage or not with your newsletter about it, that’s the same energy, babe. Just get on with your creative self, because you have things to do, projects to tend, and life to live. 

Pick a date and start. Today seems as good a time as any. Start with 90 days. Hire a social media person to run your page, and post what you write, so you can stay off the apps. Focus on your website, and blog, and school, and relationships. Move your body. Do some yoga. Breathe. 

It’s only 90 days. If you start now, you’ll be done before equinox. 

Don’t talk about it. 

Be about it.

that night...

the next morning...

Yesterday I posted the open link for the ASC newsletter. I shared about it on Instagram and explained a little about my priority to shift focus off social media. It felt good, aligned with the Gemini full moon, and I celebrated myself for taking action in the direction of my goal. 

Then I woke up today, hungover. 

Not from alcohol (415 days alcohol-free, baby) but maybe from the moon, or maybe from the dopamine of actually doing a thing. 

There’s a strange phenomenon when I finally make a move on something that’s been pent up inside me for a while. After I share it, I feel a release, and then, less energy or enthusiasm for whatever the project is. 

Today, it’s only 9:24am and I miss Instagram. My phone is off in the other room, and I’m working on my morning pages, enjoying a hot foamy matcha, and marveling at how quiet my house can be. (This won’t last, the boys have winter break starting in two days). I’m sitting down to work and notice my mind’s eye keeps wandering to the exact place my phone is sitting on top of my dresser. 

Am I surprised? Not really, but at this moment I can’t remember any of the reasons I felt so compelled to make space from my phone. Good thing I made so many lists, so I can go back and reread them (ha).

Last night I was scrolling on Threads and came across a post that was sharing, with a hefty sense of threat, what danger is to befall small business owners and entrepreneurs who don’t hurry up and create an infinitely complex system of content repurposing and advertising but don’t worry of course you can pay her to show you how to do it for just $25,000 and I just felt so, so, so... tired.

I am so tired of people in the online business realm doing this to each other. Like, I get it. AI is going to change things in terms of how content is created and distributed. People who aren’t participating in the volume game might get left behind by the algorithms. 

This is EXACTLY WHY I have retreated to my digital witch hut at the edge of the online forest and will wait here for people to find me. They can follow the trails of breadcrumbs I’ll continue to leave in social media spaces, but for Goddesses sake, aren’t we tired of being afraid all the time? 

What I am dreaming instead is dropping deeper, like way-down-in-the-well deeper, into self-trust, and into a relationship with my own voice, essence, and creativity. I don’t want to repurpose the same 30 pieces of content into 700 pieces of content that are automatically regurgitated by robots to ‘hook’ you into buying something. 

I. don't. want. the. robots.

I will write. I will anchor into my belly, my heart, my brow and my crown, and feel it channel and flow out past the throat. I will let it stay messy, because this is a practice in decolonizing my own creativity, healing it from being suffocated by a lifetime of perfectionist criticism.

I will go touch some fucking grass.

Because when I stand, feet listening upon the Earth, I know I am supported by an organic intelligence that requires no supercomputers to power it, that doesn’t pour out a liter of water onto this scorched Earth to write a simple email, that doesn’t try to feed me the deep-seated lie of capitalist modernity that MORE IS ALWAYS BETTER.

I will sit with the discomfort of my dopamine-seeking brain, the desire to be validated, affirmed, celebrated, emoji-spinkled, and praised. 

I sit frozen with this for a moment. My goodness, what a clever way to tease the desperate hunger of the parts of us that long to be ‘good enough…’ 

The powers that be create a system where every day, we feed our creativity, brilliance, hopes, dreams, prayers, rituals, and longings, into an illusory digital ‘community’, where they are ever-so-briefly, and in the most shallow way, witnessed and celebrated.

It just might keep us cycling in a fragmented dupe of what human nature longs for most - creative expression, collective witnessing, and community care.

My hangover is feeling better. It was probably just the moon, after all.