time spent offline

Confession: I have been spending way too much time online lately.

It happened over time. I would give in a little bit here, a little bit over there, and it adds up. There are the excuses, of course, and the accidental discoveries that stop the old tricks from working; and the exhaustion from letting myself down yet again. I should know better, I should do better, but life keeps getting in the way. First went my dumb smartphone. I discovered I could easily change the passcode to block the apps that waste so much of my time, and it was no use asking people to put in a passcode. I figured how to easily “allow” Safari— you know just to look up a recipe, look up events happening on a Friday, etc.

But mostly, as it usually is with these things, I would fall into the trap of mindless scrolling. It’s easy to avoid the trap during the day time, but when the night time rolls around and I’m all alone and lonely, it becomes harder to resist. There is no harm in a little escape right? A chuckle here, some online validation over there. I try to be okay with it: Night time is the toughest. But soon enough, I’m waking up to my phone most mornings; I open my eyes and the first thing I reach for is my phone and into the digital hellscape I go. Luckily, I got used to waking up unplugged for so long that this sent alarm bells. I felt bad. I had spent a long time building better digital habits, I should know better, I should do better.

A while ago, a lovely human said to me “don’t should on yourself.” It is easy to fall for the should-trap: I should block Safari on my phone, I should read a book before bed, I should wake up unplugged. These are my shoulds lately. I know what is best for me and I know I would feel better, far better, and my life would improve in small but important ways if I do those things, but is it worth should-ing on myself? The shoulds impose perfection; that we must spend each night with a book and each morning without devices— for at least an hour, the experts recommend. But real life is complex, messy, full of shit. The shoulds take away from all the progress I have made so far too. I am so focused on what is not working at the moment that I forget the changes that have become automatic and make my life so much better.

For one, I’m not on social media: It’s a choice that has greatly improved my life. I rarely go on my phone if I am around people, I make the effort to spend time with family and friends as much as I can, and these things in turn translate to less time spent online. It’s actually pretty simple; you reach out, you make plans, you commit, and you enjoy the company of others in real time. I am also constantly doing things out of my comfort zone and naturally that gets me offline too. My morning still usually includes a book, some journaling, and I often do it outside: No phone, no internet. These are very good things worth noticing.

Even though I’m not where I want to be with my time spent offline journey, I am so ahead of where I used to be and I do like where I am right now. We all know what we should do, at some level at least. And when we do what we should do, it feels great. But there are times when it feels impossible to put the phone down and face reality head on. Instead of should-ing on ourselves, it’s better to accept that unplugging is a journey; a process— of learning, unlearning, understanding, misunderstanding, failing sometimes, and getting it right other times. Don’t miss the forest for the trees: So concerned with the small things that are not going well, you forget to look at the situation as a whole, and the small positive changes that have made all the difference. Take it as a journey. All in due time. Ebb and flow. You lose some, but you do in fact win some. Perfection is the enemy of perfectly adequate. Don’t should on yourself.