time spent offline

I turn 30 this month. With age I have become less volatile, more sentimental. “The dots connect looking back,” he tells me over our Friday drinks; he’s quoting Steve Jobs. I nod— It is true. When the mood strikes, when I feel brave enough, gentle enough to look back, I pull the plastic bin from under the bed and I rummage through my carefully labelled journals from the past four years. For six years prior to switching to paper, I used a free online journal but I have no immediate access to those now— They’re saved somewhere on a USB stick that is no longer compatible with the Macbook I use and I’m too principled and stubborn to buy the adapter for it. But the $2 notebooks, there’s a pile of those now: Pages and pages and pages of daily contemplations, daily tantrums accessible anytime I feel brave enough, gentle enough to look back; the living adds up.

And when I look back, bravely, gently, it shocks and delights me to see how all the dots connect.

A year ago today, dated June 04, 2023, I write in my journal, I declare really, I am no longer hating myself. I’m reading Sisters of the Yam by bell hooks at the time, and I remember because I make note of it in the journal entry, and because that book changes my life for forever to come. And two years ago, in a different life I reckon, dated June 04, 2022, my journal entry begins, It dawned on me last night, I am miserable because I don’t do one thing whole assed. My life is a collection of many half-assed things, and I would go on for three more pages writing about half-assed living and wasting away. All summer long that year, everything around me was in bloom, except I; I was rotting, wasting away. And a year prior to the rotting summer of 2022, June 04, 2021, a few lifetimes ago now, the title of my journal entry reads SET PERSONAL STANDARDS— All caps, urgent. I urge myself to always aim to be the very, very best I can be. The entry is only one page long and I ask myself questions I won’t have the answers for until much later, until very recently. Without answers and frustrated, I berate and belittle myself for my lack of personal standards, for wasting away on the forums, in the wrong life; Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling— Running.

I’m all smiles, teary-eyed and all, rereading those entries recently, as I look back gently, fondly. I wonder if she, who I were then— scared, small, sad, suffocating, I wonder if she had an idea, an inkling that even when all she felt then was small, sad, suffocating, if she were to continue to fight the urge to scroll, tap, like, comment to avoid facing the roaring truth within her; if she were to show up day after day to the empty pages urging herself to make good use of her time, her attention— her one wild, precious life, I wonder if she had an idea of what today, a future so far in the distance that it seemed unreachable, impenetrable then, I wonder if she knew somewhere deep inside her that today, today, June 04, 2024, would hold the answer to a question she would ask the empty pages over and over again in her desperation for freedom; What is heaven?

Heaven is a place on earth, and I met god one random day very recently while scribbling on the empty pages of my $2 notebook in the quiet, calm, peaceful morning tucked away in the tiny corner of my apartment. There were no avatars, no internet connection; just calm, peaceful silence. God? I said. Yes. And before I could ask, before I could say Where the hell have you been!? and berate him for abandoning me, for leaving me stranded all these years, I understood: Here the entire time. I was just too busy running away. Too busy scrolling, tapping, searching for answers on Google, and other means of course, to hear her; The voice inside. God? Yes. God? Yes. God? Yes. Everywhere, all the time— Oh, hello there. Yes.

Looking back, the dots connect and some days overwhelmed by such knowing, I weep into the pages from years prior: If only you knew, if only you knew, if only you knew. How a year of desperately wanting better but constantly letting yourself down can lead to a life of rotting, wasting away; and how a year of rotting can fertilize the ground for another year of declaration after declaration of making good use of your one wild, precious life, and in that declaration, the gods— delighted by your unrelenting pleading, begging, unreasonable faith in a different way of being, show up one day and say, you will miss it if it wasn’t for the quiet, calm, peaceful mornings spent without the avatars screaming their daily grievances at you first thing in the morning, and you hear the gods say, whisper gently, Yes. And in that Yes, you find all the answers you need for making good use of — wonderful, delightful, joyful use of your one wild, precious life. No internet connection required.