2022 beat my ass. I aged ten years in two weeks, what did you accomplish? Getting offline won’t save you from yourself, that’s lesson one. Nothing will save your from yourself, except maybe death, but then it won’t matter anyway. In the meantime, getting (mostly) offline has made life much better. Compared to what? I can’t say, but it feels better. It is truly the gift that keeps on giving and I’m excited to see where this journey, this little adventure of mine, will take me. There is no going back now.
(more…)Category: Leisure
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Wintering offline
Bundle up and gather around, I got a two-word horror story to tell: It snowed. It’s not that I hate winter. It’s just that I hate four hours of daylight and deadly icy sidewalks, and of course, the cold. It sickens me. But as the prayer goes, God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. So, it is officially winter. It’s cold, it snows, and it gets dark crushingly early. Naturally, I want to recoil and die. People tell me they understand my despair: We can’t believe it’s dark already, wasn’t everyone wearing a t-shirt last week? “Watch your steps hun, it’s slippery.” It hurts. It helps. We’re all collectively trying to get through another season of freezing hell, short dark days, icy roads, leafless trees, gloomy afternoons, and it sucks for everyone.
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Apps won’t cure your loneliness
(Sorry, social media followers don’t count.)
Accept failure.
I’m browsing at my favourite shop with my best friend. “Girl, look at you!” I look up beaming. Compliments from strangers are the best; your boyfriend should think you are beautiful. The usual small talk ensues until we find a common ground. “Where are you from?” In Toronto, one of the most multicultural and multiracial cities in the world, this is a common question from strangers; it means where are you originally from. Ethiopia. Oromo. Harare. No longer stranger, we are linked together with thousands of years of tradition, custom, and love. I pull out my phone, “let’s exchange numbers!” By evening we are texting to make plans to hang out that weekend. We do, and it doesn’t work out as I had hoped. Everybody ain’t for everybody.
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A weekend getaway
I have spent man, many years fantasizing about a total escape from the digital world; chuck the smartphone, delete social media, not even bother with Google. Unplugged, disconnected, completely offline. I still fantasize about it, although it has become more of a distant longing. It would be nice, sure, but reality requires something else of me. That’s just life, I think. Instead, I have learned to appreciate the little moments I get to spend away from the internet. Like most mornings I spend reading and journaling, workout classes with not even a Fitbit on sight, Friday evenings spent tucked away at a bar for our weekly gin and conversation. When I’m feeling really fancy, I put on music and do Sudoku puzzles for hours; I sense heaven. This past weekend I got lucky and spent it away from email and browsing. It was accidental.
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Idle hands scroll
Bad advice is a dime a dozen.
I look at my Friday schedule noting I had made no plans. I figured with a busy weekend ahead, and consecutive busy weekends prior, my liver, wallet, and I could use a little break. Just chill at home, I think, it’s okay to be bored. By 4:00pm, I know I have made a bad bargain with the devil; idle, bored, and emotionally distraught, I text a friend to hang out. On my way there, ready for a night of gin and good conversation, I think about what a shit advice be bored is. I am bored! That’s the problem! A lot of advice online is so far removed from reality, at times I wonder who writes it— AI, probably— and who it is for. Many things sound good in theory but have little to no application in real life. You know what else sounds really good in theory? The productivity gurus’ advice to keep our schedules full of important and productive activities. They tell us, work for 12 hours, exercise for 4, and sleep for 8, and well if you add it all up, that’s 24 hours. I’m trying to enjoy living so I have stopped caring about frivolous things like being productive. It takes up too much of my time anyway.
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Don’t should on yourself
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.
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You don’t need discipline to get offline
As your typical millennial #girlboss, #hustler I have had the pleasure of drinking the discipline Kool-Aid from the fountains of every discipline guru on the internet. It is a good idea to learn from other people. I owe my unplugging journey to everyone that came before me screaming into the digital void that this internet thing is ruining us before we can finish typing http://www.insta… Naturally, amongst other parts of my life, I have tried every trick in the discipline handbook, books, online articles, YouTube videos, you name it, to unplug from the attention economy. It all sounds good in theory but it doesn’t work, or more accurately it works until it doesn’t work.
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It takes getting used to
As is with most things in life, spending time offline just takes getting used to. And I know a thing or two about getting used to. Getting used to a new country, a new language, a new city, a new life. People get used to war, peace, high gas prices— it’s all kind of the same in a way. It’s just easier to get used to when getting used to is the only option, much harder when you have choices. August 6, I spent a full day offline: No phone, no internet, no TV, nada, it was Global Day of Unplugging. It was much easier this time around: I am getting used to being offline. In a way, it has become my normal. I have removed a lot of the choices I used to have: I’m not on social media, I have tricked myself into finding the internet a boring waste of time— an endless noise, and fewer and fewer things truly grab my attention online these days. The internet is my absolute last resort of escape.
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How to spend 24 hours unplugged
August 6 is #GlobalDayofUnplugging. You can take the pledge to unplug from your devices and plug into life here. If over half a decade of unplugging has taught me anything, it is that unplugging is the easiest part of, well, unplugging: Just walk away from the screen. Through years of trial and terror, err, error, I have learned a few lessons on how to spend a day offline. First thing first: Out of sight, out of mind. I recently unplugged for a day and while it is very nice to unplug as part of a collective effort to disassociate, Oops, I mean disconnect from the digital noise, you can unplug for a 24-hour period, or longer, or shorter, any time of the day, week, month.
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In praise of tech-free sleep
I recently bought an analog alarm clock in a desperate attempt to fix my sleep schedule. “Did it wake you up?” I asked innocently; “It woke the neighbors up,” he responded. I was happy it worked. I no longer had an excuse to bring my phone to bed. Life is full of excuses. Full of buts. We can spend a lifetime on “I would… but…” I would totally leave my phone in the other room but I need it for alarm clock. I would totally quit social media but… Never realizing it could be as simple as clicking a button on Amazon, or a commitment to reality.
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time spent offline 