0. preamble

The only place to begin is where I am. Lately, perhaps for the last few months, I’ve sensed an agitation within, a feeling that there is something else I am meant to do, if I could only slow down enough to focus and find it.

What frequently seems to drain, steal, or snatch my focus is my phone, specifically, social media apps, but also the simple presence of my phone with all its tiny dopamine hits and rabbit trails of seductive distraction. 

Sometime before my 39th birthday, sitting in an IKEA parking lot on a day that I’d been particularly engrossed in my phone, to the dismay and frustration of my family, I heard a familiar inner voice suggest a year without a phone. This familiar voice is one that speaks when I am being asked to change and grow in the direction of who I am called to become, but often the path they suggest seems uncomfortable, undesirable, or even impossible to my normal waking consciousness. 

What would I do without a phone? I’m reliant (read: addicted) to my phone in many ways, having been a habitual smartphone user for at least fifteen years. How would I navigate successfully without GPS? I have young children, and their school needs to be able to reach me. The majority of my paying work is contingent on being available to my clients, much of which happens via my phone. 

I toy with the idea of a dumb phone - going back to a flip phone, or spending hundreds of dollars for a pared down smartphone which limits activities to calls, texts, GPS and music. But I’m resistant to restriction; years of disordered eating, controlling relationship dynamics and my own reclamation of empowered choice make it anathema to my spirit.

When I dig deeper into the ‘why’ behind the no-phone invitation, it’s not exactly about abandoning technology, but about changing my relationship to the performative hyperconnectivity default of modern culture. 

I catch myself opening Instagram and not realizing how I got there. The other day I was replying to a random person’s Thread about natural childbirth fears, and in a moment of clarity recognized that I was giving my energy away to a complete stranger in a fleeting digital exchange that was unlikely to hold any significant meaning for them, and certainly didn’t for me.

What am I losing by participating in the incessant chatter of social media? 

What are the pros and cons of staying? I sat with these questions and made lists, always heavier on the ‘con’ column than the ‘pro.’ Yet through social media many of my deepest, most valued relationships - personal and professional - have formed over the past decade. 

Part of me is afraid to step away for fear that I will lose opportunities, relevance, and meaningful connection.

Another part (a wiser one) recognizes that it is only by having the courage to step off the beaten path that we can discover what wild magic awaits on the road less traveled. 

Ego and self-importance play a funny role in this inner dialogue; they’re convinced that how I show up - or don’t - on one app, as one person out of ten billion, is a big decision. Some well-meaning people sent messages affirming that my presence there uplifts them, or that they appreciate the perspectives and wisdom I share, and the part of me not ready for this experiment seized upon those as evidence that I must stay. 

At this moment, mulling it over, it doesn’t seem like a big deal either way. However, this stream of consciousness writing feels good. 

Sitting with my computer and a blank page, allowing thoughts to stream out and express themselves in more than 2200 characters, in more than a one paragraph blip meant to ‘hook’ people, feels like a truer way to speak and listen. 

Of course I cannot yet know all the ways my creativity will flow, when funneled to channels, practices and expressions that are not social media.

Of course I don’t know yet. That’s the point of the process, to learn and find out. 

Of course I’m not comfortable in the not-knowing. To not-know has always felt like a threat, when my worth and value has so often been associated with my certainty, confidence, intelligence, my rational ways of knowing. 

I am 39 years, one month, and 14 days old. 321 days remain until my 40 birthday. I set an intention to be the healthiest I’ve ever been when I meet that midlife threshold, and the layers of well-being truly asking to be met are in a realm beyond exercise, diet, and skincare.

I am hungry to meet myself more deeply. There is nothing terribly wrong in my relationship with social media, but not enough vibrantly right, either.

I tell myself a story that it is necessary for clients to find me, but I’ll never find out if that’s true unless I explore other possibilities. 

I’m torn between a grand declarative commitment to a sabbatical of a specific duration, and a softer, more curious, intuitive approach taking it one day at a time.

It’s illuminating to write that and realize that a third option - not changing my default habit pattern - is not actually an option at all. 

Mercury is retrograde in Sagittarius as I write this - in my 6th house of habits, routines, practices. What will I find in turning my communications inward? The inquiry calls for parameters, objectives, a thesis of sorts.

What do we lose by hyper-focusing on social media?

On there, we are never really fully here. If I’m lucky, my life is only halfway over, and it's time for me to be more here.