time spent offline

Why do you say you want one thing and then go and do the opposite?

What is wrong with you?

Why do you spend evening after evening, weekend after weekend, scrolling from the same spot on your couch, while putting off your goals, hopes, and dreams until tomorrow? (Tomorrow never came.)

Why do you let Silicon Valley trick you so easily? Yeah, read it. All of it.

Why do you allow social media to monopolize your free time and attention so easily? If the cats are so cute, go pet some. What the hell is wrong with you?

Why is your attention so easily tricked, bought, and sold to the highest bidder? What do you get out of it? Connections? Really? To who? While ignoring your spouse, children, and god knows what else for another cheap dopamine hit from the avatars. If it wasn’t so sad, I would laugh at you.

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Why do you give yourself up so easily?

Why don’t you just stop scrolling?

Why are you wasting your time staring into a black mirror? Tapping at a void— endless, empty. What do you get out of it? After all the hours you spent staring into the void— days, nights, weeks, months— what do you have to show for it? Tell me.

If you so badly want to be informed, why don’t you read the books? They still have newsletters too. Isn’t one subscription enough to know all you need to know with the world?

If you so badly want to know what people are up to, why don’t you ask them to dinner and talk to them? They are dying to tell you, to tell anyone who would listen.

But that’s not why, is it?

It’s not about being informed. It’s not even about connection. It’s about ignoring the simple truth that can potentially save you.

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You can’t stand yourself.

That’s why you can’t put the phone down even for a moment. What comes up when you aren’t drowning it in a sea of content makes you sick; run back to their cheap trills right away. Go from app to app, desperate to ignore yourself, desperate to be saved from yourself.

What is wrong with you?

What is so wrong with you that the apps must keep you away from yourself day after day? Year after year? If you dislike your own company so much, what makes you think others would enjoy it? Silly girl.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I know it all. I think I know you better than you know yourself. And why wouldn’t I? I was there once. I couldn’t stand her. She couldn’t stand me. My god. How lucky are we it’s just social media? Just Reddit. Do you know what happen to people that find other means of escape? Expensive, deadly habits. This is just undignified; wasting life away on the Internet.

And what now?

What do you do when the truth is that simple? (Not easy, simple.)

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Before I tell you what to do— since what you need to do is as simple as the truth itself— you must promise me, yourself that you would give it, whatever you need to do, your best, honest effort.

If you really want to get offline, if you really mean it, if you want this to be your last stop on the internet, you must commit to the effort it takes— often debilitating and disorienting effort— to achieve what you desire: time spent offline.

This is true for most other things in life. All good things take effort.

That’s the first step. As yourself: Do I really want to get offline? Do I really mean it? Because you know what to do. You know how to turn your phone into a dumb phone, get a flip phone, and delete social media. You know there are better things to do that this. Why don’t you do it? If you really want to, if you really mean it.

Wait, no. Those are the wrong questions. Of course, you want to get offline. Why else would you be here letting a stranger tell you you can’t stand yourself? Silly me. Of course you mean it. I did too.

The question is: Are you willing to commit to the effort it takes— debilitating and disorienting effort— to achieve what you desire: time spent offline?

If yes, the rest is simple.

The rest is to come.