Life Without Social Media is Fucking Awesome

(not kidding)

Early this week I was missing Twitter. I even tweeted something, and sneakily scrolled for a few minutes. Then I logged out. I told myself I could return to Twitter whenever I wanted. Give it a few days, I said. In those few days I meditated for fifteen minutes each morning, went to an al-anon meeting, did yoga, and nannied. By Friday I absolutely do not want to go back on social media. Ever.

The word purify floated up for me today, as I sat in traffic on my way home. It’s been seven months since I’ve had a drink. I quit sugar two weeks ago. It’s been almost two months since I’ve been an active social media user. I’ve had a more regular yoga practice, been getting more exercise, and have had some irl socially distanced hangs. My yoga teacher training is inspiring and energetic. I’ve started blending a green smoothie every morning (recipe at the bottom of this newsletter). I’m evaluating how I can make better use of my free time, and fill it with rest and things that inspire me, rather than checking out and watching a show immediately when I get home from work.

I’ve had the urge to declutter my apartment, letting go of the rest of my mother’s things and various meaningful knick knacks I’ve dragged around for the past ten years. Early in the morning, when I wake, I can hear the birds singing. They know spring is coming. Before I do anything, I meditate for fifteen minutes. I’ve started studying Hindi again (I studied it in college). I’m thinking about going back to grad school, not for writing. I’m visualizing my book, still with my editor, in a golden cage, surrounded by flowers and vines and sunshine. I’ve locked the cage. I’ll return later. I can’t dwell on what I can’t control.

the boys and I petted this succulent together.

Life without social media is purifying. The thing is, I’m present. My thoughts are my own. I don’t immediately eject them into the world to be claimed or tamed by other people’s opinions. I didn’t realize how toxic it was, how suppressive it was to my creativity. Have an idea, a little seed, and plant it on Twitter. It won’t grow. Not the way it should. There’s not the right sunlight on Twitter. We can’t photosynthesize anything there. I am now living in a liminal space, closer to my own natural thought patterns and able to swim in the ocean of my own ideas and inspirations.

I know that my experience of social media is my own. I know that some people may have a healthy relationship with social media. Someday I’d like to be able to cultivate that, but I also know that more time away is essential.

Now that I’ve stopped thinking up perfect captions for my Instagram photos I’ve started feeling into who I want to be in the world. How I want to be in relationship (like, real life relationship) with people and my community. I feel a river of energy inside of me, but I am releasing the need to guide it in a particular direction. I am releasing the rigid idea of myself as a literary writer. The idea of myself as anyone thinks I should be. The idea that my nonbinary gender identity needs to look a certain way. The idea that my life is somehow outside of the norm. The idea of a norm. The idea of uniqueness. I am releasing all my ideas and seeing which ones come back, which ones I really want. I had forgotten the sound of my own voice, forgotten how beautiful it is, forgotten how it feels to be lost in study, to turn my phone off, to not be interested in my phone at all. I’d forgotten what freedom felt like. I’m truly, really, definitely not being hyperbolic.

I am super duper grateful I stopped using social media.

This week I listened to an episode of The Knowledge Project with Nir Eyal, who wrote a book called “Indistractible.” In it, Eyal talks about the documentary The Social Dilemma, which he calls inaccurate. He’s right, to a point— the film is highly sensationalized (but he also seemed bitter that they decided not to include his interview). Eyal suggests that the problem of distractibility isn’t social media; that social media companies don’t want to hypnotize their users or exploit them, but that the issue is distraction itself, and that we need to compartmentalize our time into little boxes so we’re always productive. I’m making the interview sound bad, but it was actually quite informative and I really like his idea of using our calendars to pen in our intentions with how to use our time. He almost convinced me that it was ok to be on social media, but I’m glad he didn’t. During his interview I questioned my sabbatical. Should I really be able to deal with social media in a different way? He spoke of digital minimalism as if it were an impossibility, a stupid idea. He dismissed it. And I get that, for some people, going offline isn’t really an option. I feel grateful that I took the leap, even if it means my freelancing career is, for the time being, basically over and I am solely supporting myself by being a nanny. I am much happier, though, so that’s okay with me.

Some people are fine with social media? I guess? Idk. What I am noticing is that I am more present in my life without it. My increased presence means that I pay more attention to how I feel, what I’m thinking, and why I’m thinking it. I think more critically, but am less critical of myself. Social media me was scattered and anxious. Me without social media? Grounded. That’s all the empirical evidence I need.

This week I noticed myself noticing more. At Magnuson Park the boys played in the sand and I stood at the edge of the water, watching the ducks tenderly skimming their beaks along the edges of round rocks, looking for food. As I stood, the ducks came closer to me, as if drawn by my presence. One of the boys was scared of them, but as we stood and watched them it seemed they were curious about us, these being so like the other beings that come to feed them sometimes. We had no food.

I’d never looked closely at a duck before. Each of them had a small black mark mid-beak. The decorative green feathers on the heads of the boy ducks shone iridescently even in the dull light emanating from the overcast sky. Each duck, had a wide blue stripe under each wing, flanked by a black and white border. I stared at their feet— webbed and orange. The webbing in between each toe was nearly transparent. It looked so delicate as the ducks stood on the cold pebbled beach. When I met their eyes I saw intelligence there. I wondered, how do they see me? How do I appear to them? The feathers on their bellies were tiny, almost like small hairs. What miraculous creatures.

There is so much we don’t notice. There is so much beauty in the world.

What I’ve been reading/doing/loving this week:

• I started a podcast! It will be linked in next week’s newsletter.

• This woman built an earthen home in Wales and I want to live there. Beautiful large windows, a living roof, and surrounded by a garden. Plus that fireplace? So dreamy.

• I quit sugar two weeks ago. It’s been way harder than I thought, and I was eating way more sugar than I thought I was! Now milk tastes sweet. Every morning I’ve been making a green smoothie that actually tastes quite good. I throw a chopped up apple, a stalk of celery, two or three kale leaves, a juiced lemon, a banana, chia seeds, and a cup of water into my Vitamix and it turns into a disgusting looking mess. I love it.

• Poor little lemurs aren’t happy alone, so they’re being paired with different lemur species. They look so happy and cuddly and I love them.

• yəhaw̓ was a decolonized art space here in Seattle and Tacoma. This is a beautiful piece about the space and what it fostered, and gives me so much hope and excitement about the future of the art world.

• Right now I’m reading Becoming Bodhisattvas, which is a translation of the ancient text The Way of the Bodhisattva. It’s a beautiful and accessible translation of an incredibly important text.

• Yoga yoga yoga- I’ve been doing so much of it (and loving it). I am especially fond of Glo, which has so many different classes and teachers and also has pilates. This short yoga class for the core really hit the spot, especially because my core needs strengthening because I often have lower back issues.

• I am incredibly excited that Ari Aster (of Midsommar and Hereditary) has cast Joaquin Phoenix in a new film.

How are you doing? I’d love to hear from you, either in the comments or in response to this email. I am sending you love.