time spent offline

Can I have your attention please?

Attention creates reality.

And my attention creates time spent offline the Substack newsletter; it has done so week after week for 3+ years now. Your attention, week after week for 3+ years now, sustains time spent offline. This tiny corner of the internet with its weekly five ideas to spend less time online and (re)discover the pleasures of the offline world exists solely because you and I— Yes, You and I— have decided it is worthy of our attention; My attention to write, your attention to read. If either of us were to decide today that this, Yes, this, isn’t worthy of our attention anymore, time spent offline the Substack newsletter would cease to exist. Our attention, what Mihaly Csikszentmuhalyi refers to as psychic energy in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (I love the term so much!!!!) creates reality as You and I know it. Without your sustained attention to read, and my ongoing attention to write, this wouldn’t exist. That is what attention does for you, for me; it creates ideas, thoughts, feelings, actions— It creates our reality.
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2024-05-21
Leaving social media is like leaving a toxic relationship you thought you couldn’t live without

As you are well aware of by now, plenty of people stay in miserable relationships but nobody wants to leave a happy marriage— And people who are content with social media don’t read time spent offline.

You are here because you are unhappy over there, and although there is a part of you that wants to leave, wants out, another part of you is scared you might need it, it might be as good as it’s going to get, or worse it could be worse out there.

I understand.

I, too, was once trapped over there, too afraid to leave, too miserable to stay.
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2024-04-30
How to connect without internet connection

The problem is you, it’s always been you.

Social media just exploits that, your inability to love the Other. The avatars are not real, only a mere representation of what is real, and it’s easy to tolerate their presence, their absence— Easy to love, easy to hate: With a tap, a click, a comment. Reality requires so much more of you, and I know it hurts. It hurt me too, until I learned, falling, failing, flailing, how to tolerate. Exposure therapy is the term the professionals use and I am still in recovery.
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2024-04-16
Mornings spent offline

Some evenings, filled with terror from witnessing another day— time— passing me by nonchalantly, and unwilling to escape my emotional discomfort with Netfixes and digital pacifiers, I turn to my morning journals. Each page is carefully handwritten and stamped, and I begrudgingly flip through the pages until I stumble upon a date, a word, a sentence that catches my attention. I read. I don’t recognize the woman from these morning pages: Curious, open, understanding, accepting—Excited for the living to come, to unfold, with her childlike glee. What does she know, I wonder, what does she know in those quiet, calm, peaceful mornings spent offline that I seem to forget as the day unfolds?

In the beginning, there is silence— If you let it be so.
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2024-04-02
Getting offline is the easy part

“Wherever you go, there you are,” he used to warn me.

This was after he gave up the pleading, and we both settled for defiance; somewhere in between disdain and indifference. I was inconsolable; These walls, I would scream, come alive each morning and raise their voices at me to mock me, to ask how come I’m still here, and he would keep on talking as if I were muted; “You’re not listening to me, wherever you go…” And after the fact, after defiance turned into indifference and there are things you simply cannot sustain on non-feeling, I would look back and realize I never so much as whispered— The screams were all in my head. And after the fact, much later, it bothered me endlessly to find out we were both right: Sometimes you gotta leave, and every time, you must face yourself.

I had to leave social media.
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2024-03-12
How to live without social media

“So, no Instagram, no Facebook, no Twitter, no Snapchat, no Tik Tok…” I know he believes me when I say I’m not on social media; it’s just that he wants to make sure I didn’t forget to mention the Instagram account I kept for art inspo or the Facebook one I keep to stay in touch with family back home. “Nope, nothing” I say, “I have email?” I offer. We move on to more interesting topics. By now my default has become no Instagram, no Facebook, no Twitter, no Snapchat, no Tik Tok… Not even WhatsApp—This one makes life the most inconvenient but as a woman of principles, I had to leave when Facebook acquired the platform sometime ago.

Life adjusts accordingly.
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2024-03-05
Offline dating is a fool’s errand

“Whagwan, sweetie!” It’s a Friday night, I’m downtown walking to catch the streetcar while fumbling with the Hoopla app on my phone to find a song that has randomly started playing in my head: Welcome to Heartbreak. Hoopla is of no use; I can’t find the dirty version and the clean version usually makes me unreasonably angry. If I were on Spotify, I could have what I want when I want it but I have made my peace with my choices a long time ago and I settle for the next best thing I can find: Ready to Die. [Parental Advisory Explicit Content] I look up following the sound— Whagwan, sweetie. I’m caught off guard; these things rarely happen anymore, and the only person randomly calling out at you on the streets is disheveled, and properly and obviously unwell. Everybody knows to ignore these people; to look away, through them, and keep walking. I make eye contact and I giggle.
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2024-02-13
The horror of direct experience

I once knew of grown men that had no say over their lives, complacent and trapped in the misery of their own making. It horrified me endlessly but I would listen carefully as they tried to justify their predicament: “You must understand,” they would plead with themselves, “she’s the boss!” and we would all laugh raucously. Nothing is funny, of course, but such predicaments require humour to placate the rage. “Want another beer?” he asks right on time and I just smile and nod. I have learned a long, long time ago to leave the grown-ups alone: When you have spent a lifetime weaving the traps of misery tightly around your life, the kindest thing someone can do for you is to leave you alone to it. Sometimes, it is too late. When I get the time to be alone with my thoughts, my journal, I ask the empty pages the question that’s been bugging me all afternoon in-between beers and niceties: How does one end up trapped in such predicament? Before it’s too late for me too, I plead. The page whispers back: The horror of direct experience.
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2024-01-30
The internet is a numbing agent

When we both said we’re done and the judge signed off on the papers, they said I should anticipate seven stages of grief: Shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing, and acceptance. “In no particular order,” they emphasized. It was supposed to make one feel better; You will feel like shit, no doubt, but don’t worry if it’s in no particular order. But I knew there would only be six stages for me regardless of the order. “I think I’m depressed,” I say to her. This is years before; there are no judges, just a woman with a yellow notepad I’m hoping will see my tears and prescribes me the cure. “Chemically imbalanced,” I add for emphasis referencing my Psych 101 notes in between sobs. “Trust me you’re not depressed,” she says and adds I just need to do some internal housecleaning, that there’s a little girl in there (she points to her heart) trapped with all the debris. When time’s up, I leave. I never go back. And this time around when they say I should anticipate seven stages of grief, I know I will skip one naturally: Depression. I never get depressed, I rage. Google defines rage as a “violent and uncontrolled anger,” and if you search what causes anger, Google says “intense emotions like fear, frustration, or pain… feelings of helplessness.” I don’t get angry either, I rummage through the debris and I weep. Tears are the feminine expression of rage.
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2024-01-23
Scroll-free evenings

Evening starts when you are done all your tasks, chores, duties for the day, and there is the time that remains, that lull between dinner and sleep; too tired for anything productive, too wired for sleep, and so you fill it with the internet— Scroll, scroll, scroll. Because you are scrolling, because of the blue light, rage, and information overload, you are even more wired, sleep alludes you, and you scroll more. It’s a never-ending cycle, night after night, day after day. You know what to do, why don’t you do it? There is no good reason to be on the internet in the evenings anyway; the emails, texts, tweets, reposts, notifications all can wait until the next morning. It is this mind shift that has been helping me keep my laptop, phone, and the internet away from me in the evening: Tomorrow, it will all be there.
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2024-01-09