"And isn’t that what life wants of us, really? To live with this world like we care about it." Beautiful. That's going in my journal as a keeper (I'm a collector of lines from things I read that I want to revisit and you're in there more than once).
After being a very early adopter and heavy user of several platforms I've cut back and back and back and it's freeing. The parasocial connections I have through this and other newsletters/spaces that have a strong sense of community make it worthwhile to get online. I think of the advice I read (online!) about choices in general, "Does this enlarge me or diminish me?" Reading your newsletter enlarges me; dealing with the Twitter-pated diminishes me. Allocate time accordingly.
My relationship with technology has moved toward one that enables more life lived, thanks to the nature of my work. Today I rode my bike in late afternoon sunshine to my neighborhood bakery where I got to talk with my state representative because she happened to be there and I owed her an email reply about a state program my division runs; greeted one of the regular cashiers and splurged on a latte with their housemade almond syrup to go with my hazelnut shortbread cookie; sat and read and could field a couple of work things that were time-sensitive because I had my phone; came home and made a batch of hummus and started my evening.
Without that phone I would have stayed home at my laptop and could have kept going into darkness--not for the pings, which come whether or not I want them thanks to Teams chat and Outlook email both having emojis because They Are Everywhere Now, but because there's always more work and I genuinely love what I do (working for better active transportation is incredibly fulfilling).
And yet as I've gotten more advanced in my career it's been easier to recognize that this "keep going" option will always be true--there is always more work, I will never be done, and therefore it's absolutely essential that I live a life full of people and experiences and things I love and not rely on work to provide all my nutrients. I'm incredibly fortunate in my career; I'm always doing work I believe in and that sustains me and enables me not to think of work as getting in the way of living. Fortunately I'm also very good at taking real weekends and real vacations and model that for the people I work so they know that's the expectation.
You always make me think and connect things. Thank you for writing.
Barb, I love reading every word of this and am tempted to print it out myself and put it somewhere where I can read it regularly and be reminded! This is exactly the kind of life and relationship with both technology and work that so many dream of, and to see how *possible* it is, is tremendously beautiful. In an accessible "we can do this! it's possible!" kind of way. I love how you describe the freedom here that your phone gives you and how you use that freedom. That is what is possible if we use it, as you say, to craft a life well lived.
And also, I only heard the phrase about parasocial relationships online very recently, mostly in an understandably somewhat put-down-ing way, but as you point out here, I wonder if they're really so bad. I definitely feel enlarged by almost all of my interactions within this platform. (It's my particular scrolling habits that make Notes a diminisher for me -- the content is fine, it's the mindless scrolling I fall into that's a problem.) The work will always be there. But so will the relationships, waiting for our attention.
Parasocial is a newer term for me too and I think I somewhat misused it. I feel like it could fill a gap to describe people I feel a connection with and yet have never met, without it being only contexts like like fan admiration for celebrities. That's the meaning that feels put-down-ish; I'd like to expand it to mean something warmer, not stalkerish or based on fantasy. I really do have a connection with people in a comment space in which we have an asynchronous conversation.
As an example of the genuine relationships, every morning I go to grateful.org for their question of the day. A number of regulars comment and interact there. I know things about them like medical conditions, challenges with offspring battling addiction, their own work to "discover" (word of choice from one person rather than recover) from alcoholism--so much highly personal information. We're a community and if they offered up the chance to talk in real time via Zoom we'd all be there in a heartbeat. We worry about one daily commenter who hasn't been there in a while. Another daily commenter shared so much about her sorrow when her husband died, finding new love, and then the sudden discovery that she was going to die of cancer that was pretty much everywhere. She came to the community to post and tell us that, knowing we would wonder when she just stopped posting. Such an outpouring of love and appreciation for her, and she came back one more time to read and know that we cared about her and would miss her. It was beautiful. And real. And also timebound in a particular kind of container that doesn't lead to endless scrolling, which is probably part of what makes it work so well.
Well, I've only heard of it recently, and you're right that it mostly seems to be used in a put-down-ish kind of way. Like, I don't have a relationship with Taylor Swift, but do I feel like I'm creating one by watching snippets of her life on YouTube? (To be clear, though I enjoy her music, I do not want any kind of personal friendship with TS. I am not a high-energy person and would probably be exhausted within half an hour!)
But I liked that you used it differently here, because the criticisms of it do seem to leave out these other potentials. It's one of the things that made the internet so inspiring when it first really became big, was how it could connect people in widely different cultures and places, but through common interests and curiosity. Like that international walkability group whose webinar you attended -- I think a lot about the guy there who was in Iran, and how differently you can view things like anti-government protests in an authoritarian society when you even briefly online "meet" someone who's living it.
What a beautiful story. That reminds me of a Discord channel I'm in, a very small one, and when someone disappears from it we worry about them. Or there was someone on Substack who wrote a newsletter about sourdough. I didn't follow it but saw them reposted a lot, and recently saw a bunch of people worried because the person's profile had entirely disappeared.
Parasocial online relationships can be awful hopeful. They show how deeply humans want to care about one another. 💞
I think back to early Twitter and what it permitted in finding, following, and conversing with people very different from me. I learned so much about racial justice and disability justice and connected with people virtually whom I would then meet at conferences. I'd feel like we already knew each other a bit, not like meeting strangers, and I could maintain the connections afterwards through social media. I can see them now at a conference years later and we're hugging friends, for those who are huggers (I ask permission).
YES! I learned a ton. It was an incredible place for that. I do believe we'll keep creating those places, but man it can be frustrating to constantly have some tech overlord use their wealth and power to change things.
BUT we still connect. After all humanity has been through, that urge is, I think, stronger than ever. To connect with and care for one another. And people are really starting to articulate it again.
Another beautiful and deep column, lots of wisdom as always in there. I like your ideas for unplugging and getting quiet, battling the tug of attention and feedback. I wish I was better at it. Only when I'm totally off grid for days (backpacking, ski touring, etc) and "No Service" (an awesome Guy Tal chapter in one of his recent books) is prevalent, can I resist and of course there is nothing I can do. Sending good thoughts your way... Paul
Yeah, that's my problem, too. I can go offline for days just fine, but finding a balance when I have access -- and need it to work -- is really, really hard for me. But man, it feels good when I can let it completely go!
I'm late in commenting because it's had me thinking, and then I realised after a while that my thoughts were still interrupting themselves constantly and I *wasn't* thinking. I was still thinking about all this - then getting distracted - then coming back - then rinse and repeat.
And...that is so much of the issue, for me, this jittery reactive state we get ourselves into and take so long to get out of. It's not like a switch being flipped. It's like being poisoned. You need 12 hours, or a full day, or 72 hours to flush it out your system. It reminds me of going on holiday - that first day that's a write-off. Or the process of going for a walk: you're not really "walking" (or at least I'm not) until about 40 minutes in, when you've warmed up and found your easy gait and forgot all the little aches and pains when you started out, and you're the right temperature, and your thoughts are unclogging. I can't cheat those 40 minutes, they must be spent in exactly that way. That's the runway. And it's frustrating and inevitable and undodgeable.
I envy you those three days in the cabin, and every time you go to the cabin. It sounds wonderful. How much of it is de-poisoning yourself, do you think? How long before you've actually arrived in the cabin and you can feel yourself truly there? How long before you're alive again?
I worry that we all need a bit longer to get these massively stimulating artificial habits out of our system than we give ourselves and/or have time for. In which case, it's time to start adding a bit onto all our estimates of how long we need to re-awaken, each time we're yanked back online and deadened by all that urgent noise and chaos...
Those are great questions, Mike, and absolutely re the "runway" of walking, flushing our systems of whatever, all of it. Everything has a time to transition over.
For the cabin time and similar times, I've always worked hard on being able to switch over really fast because, having kids, I have to be efficient with the time I've got to work. But I've been letting that go a bit more recently. The drive up there is about an hour and a half, so that helps some with transition time. And then I've got to unpack water, food, sleeping gear, firewood, etc. By then it's usually toward evening and I go walk to the river with some tea and watch sunset and then ...
You don't need to know each detail. Let's say overnight. By morning, I notice when I reach for my phone and turn it off unless I want to take a photo. But it wasn't until the 3rd morning that I felt creativity start to stir again, after letting my entire self just sit and rest with the river for a couple of days. That felt good, but it did take giving myself that time.
And you're right -- both you and Barb. I've read that before about it taking 7 days to detach ourselves from work mode to vacation, and I don't think we get enough time to really de-condition our awareness, attention, presence. I'd take more time but these cabins have a 3-night limit per stay. :)
This makes me think of task switching and the term I can't quite recall for that attentional drag of the thing you were just doing when you turn to another thing. It's still hanging onto a bit of your brain and it's hard to get back to where you were. Extend that from minutes or hours to days and that attentional drag--de-poisoning--may be somewhat the same. I read a while back that we need two-week vacations because it takes the first seven days to let go of work enough to be fully in vacation mode. Ack.
I can't recall that term either but task-switching (really trying hard to get out of the habit of calling it multitasking) is something I think about all the time now, because maybe it's age or maybe it's my post-Covid brain but I feel like I can feel like the drag, almost physically. And how hard it is to switch. To be able to just do one thing, sink into it, feels like a luxury.
It really is something else! The muddy print picture was of -- we surmised -- a very young mountain lion walking alongside probably a mother mountain lion in the mud next to a river underneath a bridge. So cool!
I came across something this week that said prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) used to love by running water and listen to it.. It made me think, this man who had the “divine” guidance (or inspiration or personal mission or whatever you’d like to call it) even with all that what he had to do in his life, used to love and sit and find solace by running water.. What would that make of us?
It also made a mental image of this inspired human, still finding the need to empty himself by a running stream.. I just that this love of running water, means something..
Oh, I love that. Thank you for sharing. Having just gotten back from this time, all I can think about are the hours I spent by running water (writing something about it), and I'll hazard a guess that anyone who's done it and let themselves sink into it has found that they walked away with far more -- connection, depth, perception, insight, grounding, whatever it all is -- than they left behind.
I, too, love that the running water means something. I like how you put that, finding the need to empty himself by a running stream.
I sometimes worry that my children barely remember what it is to live without technology. I tried to create opportunities for them to live stretches without it, but it felt like trying to patch a leaking dam with a band-aid. I barely remember it myself anymore and I miss it. Ironically, I've wasted hours of my life searching the internet for listings for raw land for sale out of a vain hope that someday I'll decamp to a little cabin off the grid on a regular basis. But to do that I'd have to accumulate extra money, which requires me not to be there. So, here I am...
The escaping to land and a cabin -- which obviously I take advantage of whenever I can! including the cabin my stepdad built on land he owned way up in the mountains decades ago -- comes up a LOT in these conversations. Which I think is useful even just as an indication of what we crave in our lives. 🧡
I have followed a similar path with technology. I waited to get a “smart” phone until I lived in Atlanta, GA and kept getting lost and having to call my sister so that she could check the map on her smart phone and tell me how to get home. My kids didn’t get phones until high school, when I legitimately felt like I couldn’t hold out any longer. I silence all but texts and calls. My Airbnb throws a bit of a wrench in this as I need notifications on for that, and when I have guests, I have to have my phone on at night if something comes up with the house. Ugh. I guess, the practice, as you say, is to come back over and over to the world, to myself, to the other selves who share my life, to be there/here as much as possible. Enjoy your cabin!
Yes, hanging on to the restoration (sometimes for what feels like dear life) is a thing. I have yet to find a way to transition smoothly (can we even do this? Is holding myself to that standard foolish?) from quiet and solitude to noise and the world. May you make your way with much compassion and gentleness towards yourself.
Beautiful photos! I love finding tracks. We don't have wolves here but even finding a raccoon track of prints down a sandy trail makes me feel alive, because I'm seeing their story. It's been a fight for me with the smartphone because it's where I "found my people" in my twenties... and I still visit some of the ones I met back then! That's where I was this weekend. I try to keep a good balance ... Arnold Schwarzenegger says to mind how screen time makes you feel; when I find a site is feeding me outrage or dopamine hits, I step away. That has been working for me lately.
The education coordinator for Swan Valley Connections is really great and really, really into squirrels. 🐿️ Her enthusiasm for them is infectious. "Come for the mountain lions and wolves, stay for the squirrels and macroinvertebrates," she says, and it's so true. The little stuff is fascinating.
Arnie's such a good influence. I have tremendous respect for him -- even before seeing your amazing shirt! I like his focus on paying attention to our own needs and how stuff makes us feel.
Like others, I don't want to add to the noise, but I wanted to let you know how much I appreciated this post. I've been reading on Substack for quite a while, but writing only since January. I appreciate how Notes has introduced writers to me, but I'm finding that even this relatively healthier social media channel also leaves me feeling icky and drained. You articulated why that is, and it was helpful for me to read your words this weekend. I hope you are in the quiet, not seeing these words until you return. So glad to have found your writing.
Thank you! And I'm glad to see you hear, and inspired by your logo --rooted, green, and growing. I suppose we each have to find ways to keep us both rooted and growing. I like how cheery people seem to be on Notes, and am glad it's a place for people to share, but for me, yeah, it doesn't even matter what's on there, it leaves me feeling icky and drained. Exactly that. Thank you! I took a longer walk than usual this morning, taken in by hilarious antics of groups of flickers among some trees. I hope you've got some quiet, too.
I’m glad to have stumbled into the newsletter of a fellow dumbphone owner! I find that’s my greatest defense from a slide into a distracted, fractured dash-to-day. But I too still need to be invigorated and re-enlivened now and again. I’ve reflected lately how paddling, socializing, and trying new things make me feel that aliveness.
Now that the schools have that number, I feel okay leaving the smartphone at home (it's a slow transition). Went for a walk today with just the dumb phone--which I am calling Sane Phone--and felt SO much lighter and better. A nicer walk than I've had in quite a while, even or especially when I couldn't take a photo of things I saw.
I'm glad to hear of other people's access to aliveness, of being conscious of aliveness. That helps for me, to be aware of what keeps it there.
I am so much in tune with your thoughts here Nia. The digital nudges have surpassed their expectations and transpired into digital ‘thuds’ now. It is impossible to own multiple smart devices and not to pay back the cost in currency of attention. That’s the trade off of modern technology I suppose. We pay for all the things that we don’t require at all.
Although the world is noisy and we feel like running away to live among the wolves and the owls, the squirrels and the magpies- I am still grateful that I could find you and the others and to be able to walk this solitary path together for however long we are destined to. Lots of love and peace to you dear Nia. 💜🌼
Swarna! Digital thuds! What a perfect description. You know, my family and friends have long since given up on me ever answering my phone. I turned the sound off years ago, too, and then turned off the vibrate notification thing because it made me anxious every time it "nudged" me. Felt more like an electric shock, but "thud" is perfect.
I am incredibly grateful for you, meeting you and getting to converse in these ways and to be able to read your incredible writing. It's those things I thought of as I reminded myself of what I personally have gained from the existence of this platform. So, so much. 🧡🕯️🧚
Nia, I wish I could be untethered enough from the brutal modern life to throw my smart device into the nearest lake and roam around the wilderness safely. But the reality is much more complicated than this idealist self who wants to be free, maybe that’s our predicament like it was our ancestors, to dislike the very thing that takes us away from ourselves. I long for all the cacophony to stop but there is just way too much stimulation even after been off social media since last 4 years.
But then I also need to acknowledge, as you did, that we might have never known each other and I would have never been a witness to your firebrand consciousness if we weren’t here on this platform. Maybe in all its weirdness there is still balance in this world that can flow and create silos of experiences even through a manmade invention.
"Maybe that’s our predicament like it was our ancestors, to dislike the very thing that takes us away from ourselves" -- that sounds exactly it. The thing that takes us away from ourselves. And how we exist with it while staying *ourselves." You always put it so well! I'm so grateful for you, Swarna. 💖🕯️🧚
Thank you for this. You remind me I haven't been to my few nights without screens in the woods for way too long - in 2021 & 22 I went every four months. So when I get back. But most of today was White Sands with no cell service, and despite a grumbly child (who just reminded me he rolled down the dunes, not just sledded), so I am grateful for this.
That sounds absolutely beautiful! Sledding and rolling both. :)
I think it was Pico Iyer who said that people are careful about taking cars in for a checkup and oil change every 3-4 months, but not ourselves. (He goes to a monastery 3-4 times a year for a few days.) I hope you get to the woods when you need it!
Thank you for writing this. I relate to so much of this. My head has been feeling noisy lately, and it's making me realise I'm neurodivergent. I jumped at the chance to go cat-sit for a friend for a month and a half. It's in another big city, but a city with parks and small forests I can walk in, and I'll be alone, which should help dial down the noise. (I've also had my gmail for around 20 years now!)
Having a cat around can be pretty calming in and of itself. My kid and I got a 40-minute session in a cat cafe recently, and I honestly felt full of endorphins or oxytocin or whatever it is that make you feel all light-headed and happy.
Dealing with noise and crowds and social gatherings has been increasingly overwhelming recently. I'm not sure what it is with me personally but I'm pretty sure we didn't evolve for this.
yeah, I'm hoping the cat and the change of scene and all the plants in her balcony will be great for me. I've always found crowds and groups difficult, and now I'm accepting it will never get any easier, and that's fine!
Last fall while bike riding along the river I rested for a few minutes at an old picnic bench by a stand of trees. Looking down I noticed someone had carved the following words into the top of the bench: "I wanna feel again."
I have a like-hate relationship with technology. I like it as a tool, not as a lifestyle. But the people who incessantly peddle technology to us want it to be our world ($$$), and for the most part, we have surrendered to them. Just like with the automobile, we are surrendering to technology our entire way of being in the world. We no longer have to walk, to think deeply, to create, or when it's inconvenient, even to feel.
Just look at what progress has brought about! The Cosmos itself will someday bow to us! Maybe then our mission will be complete!
Whew. "I wanna feel again." Talk about a cry for help. Too many of us are there too often.
Absolutely, 100% with you on the "like-hate," tool vs. lifestyle relationship. So, so much has been surrendered. And yet we keep going with it all. It's heavy. I'm going to take these words with me to that river in a couple of days. 🧡
That past paragraph -- you're a natural poet, Kenneth!
"And isn’t that what life wants of us, really? To live with this world like we care about it." Beautiful. That's going in my journal as a keeper (I'm a collector of lines from things I read that I want to revisit and you're in there more than once).
After being a very early adopter and heavy user of several platforms I've cut back and back and back and it's freeing. The parasocial connections I have through this and other newsletters/spaces that have a strong sense of community make it worthwhile to get online. I think of the advice I read (online!) about choices in general, "Does this enlarge me or diminish me?" Reading your newsletter enlarges me; dealing with the Twitter-pated diminishes me. Allocate time accordingly.
My relationship with technology has moved toward one that enables more life lived, thanks to the nature of my work. Today I rode my bike in late afternoon sunshine to my neighborhood bakery where I got to talk with my state representative because she happened to be there and I owed her an email reply about a state program my division runs; greeted one of the regular cashiers and splurged on a latte with their housemade almond syrup to go with my hazelnut shortbread cookie; sat and read and could field a couple of work things that were time-sensitive because I had my phone; came home and made a batch of hummus and started my evening.
Without that phone I would have stayed home at my laptop and could have kept going into darkness--not for the pings, which come whether or not I want them thanks to Teams chat and Outlook email both having emojis because They Are Everywhere Now, but because there's always more work and I genuinely love what I do (working for better active transportation is incredibly fulfilling).
And yet as I've gotten more advanced in my career it's been easier to recognize that this "keep going" option will always be true--there is always more work, I will never be done, and therefore it's absolutely essential that I live a life full of people and experiences and things I love and not rely on work to provide all my nutrients. I'm incredibly fortunate in my career; I'm always doing work I believe in and that sustains me and enables me not to think of work as getting in the way of living. Fortunately I'm also very good at taking real weekends and real vacations and model that for the people I work so they know that's the expectation.
You always make me think and connect things. Thank you for writing.
It’s so important to see what’s possible with technology - we need to run the tech! Not let the tech run us. Thanks for this.
💯💯💯
Barb, I love reading every word of this and am tempted to print it out myself and put it somewhere where I can read it regularly and be reminded! This is exactly the kind of life and relationship with both technology and work that so many dream of, and to see how *possible* it is, is tremendously beautiful. In an accessible "we can do this! it's possible!" kind of way. I love how you describe the freedom here that your phone gives you and how you use that freedom. That is what is possible if we use it, as you say, to craft a life well lived.
And also, I only heard the phrase about parasocial relationships online very recently, mostly in an understandably somewhat put-down-ing way, but as you point out here, I wonder if they're really so bad. I definitely feel enlarged by almost all of my interactions within this platform. (It's my particular scrolling habits that make Notes a diminisher for me -- the content is fine, it's the mindless scrolling I fall into that's a problem.) The work will always be there. But so will the relationships, waiting for our attention.
Parasocial is a newer term for me too and I think I somewhat misused it. I feel like it could fill a gap to describe people I feel a connection with and yet have never met, without it being only contexts like like fan admiration for celebrities. That's the meaning that feels put-down-ish; I'd like to expand it to mean something warmer, not stalkerish or based on fantasy. I really do have a connection with people in a comment space in which we have an asynchronous conversation.
As an example of the genuine relationships, every morning I go to grateful.org for their question of the day. A number of regulars comment and interact there. I know things about them like medical conditions, challenges with offspring battling addiction, their own work to "discover" (word of choice from one person rather than recover) from alcoholism--so much highly personal information. We're a community and if they offered up the chance to talk in real time via Zoom we'd all be there in a heartbeat. We worry about one daily commenter who hasn't been there in a while. Another daily commenter shared so much about her sorrow when her husband died, finding new love, and then the sudden discovery that she was going to die of cancer that was pretty much everywhere. She came to the community to post and tell us that, knowing we would wonder when she just stopped posting. Such an outpouring of love and appreciation for her, and she came back one more time to read and know that we cared about her and would miss her. It was beautiful. And real. And also timebound in a particular kind of container that doesn't lead to endless scrolling, which is probably part of what makes it work so well.
Well, I've only heard of it recently, and you're right that it mostly seems to be used in a put-down-ish kind of way. Like, I don't have a relationship with Taylor Swift, but do I feel like I'm creating one by watching snippets of her life on YouTube? (To be clear, though I enjoy her music, I do not want any kind of personal friendship with TS. I am not a high-energy person and would probably be exhausted within half an hour!)
But I liked that you used it differently here, because the criticisms of it do seem to leave out these other potentials. It's one of the things that made the internet so inspiring when it first really became big, was how it could connect people in widely different cultures and places, but through common interests and curiosity. Like that international walkability group whose webinar you attended -- I think a lot about the guy there who was in Iran, and how differently you can view things like anti-government protests in an authoritarian society when you even briefly online "meet" someone who's living it.
What a beautiful story. That reminds me of a Discord channel I'm in, a very small one, and when someone disappears from it we worry about them. Or there was someone on Substack who wrote a newsletter about sourdough. I didn't follow it but saw them reposted a lot, and recently saw a bunch of people worried because the person's profile had entirely disappeared.
Parasocial online relationships can be awful hopeful. They show how deeply humans want to care about one another. 💞
Yes yes yes, we want to care about one another.
I think back to early Twitter and what it permitted in finding, following, and conversing with people very different from me. I learned so much about racial justice and disability justice and connected with people virtually whom I would then meet at conferences. I'd feel like we already knew each other a bit, not like meeting strangers, and I could maintain the connections afterwards through social media. I can see them now at a conference years later and we're hugging friends, for those who are huggers (I ask permission).
YES! I learned a ton. It was an incredible place for that. I do believe we'll keep creating those places, but man it can be frustrating to constantly have some tech overlord use their wealth and power to change things.
BUT we still connect. After all humanity has been through, that urge is, I think, stronger than ever. To connect with and care for one another. And people are really starting to articulate it again.
Another beautiful and deep column, lots of wisdom as always in there. I like your ideas for unplugging and getting quiet, battling the tug of attention and feedback. I wish I was better at it. Only when I'm totally off grid for days (backpacking, ski touring, etc) and "No Service" (an awesome Guy Tal chapter in one of his recent books) is prevalent, can I resist and of course there is nothing I can do. Sending good thoughts your way... Paul
Yeah, that's my problem, too. I can go offline for days just fine, but finding a balance when I have access -- and need it to work -- is really, really hard for me. But man, it feels good when I can let it completely go!
Beautifully said. (I love listening to these!)
I'm late in commenting because it's had me thinking, and then I realised after a while that my thoughts were still interrupting themselves constantly and I *wasn't* thinking. I was still thinking about all this - then getting distracted - then coming back - then rinse and repeat.
And...that is so much of the issue, for me, this jittery reactive state we get ourselves into and take so long to get out of. It's not like a switch being flipped. It's like being poisoned. You need 12 hours, or a full day, or 72 hours to flush it out your system. It reminds me of going on holiday - that first day that's a write-off. Or the process of going for a walk: you're not really "walking" (or at least I'm not) until about 40 minutes in, when you've warmed up and found your easy gait and forgot all the little aches and pains when you started out, and you're the right temperature, and your thoughts are unclogging. I can't cheat those 40 minutes, they must be spent in exactly that way. That's the runway. And it's frustrating and inevitable and undodgeable.
I envy you those three days in the cabin, and every time you go to the cabin. It sounds wonderful. How much of it is de-poisoning yourself, do you think? How long before you've actually arrived in the cabin and you can feel yourself truly there? How long before you're alive again?
I worry that we all need a bit longer to get these massively stimulating artificial habits out of our system than we give ourselves and/or have time for. In which case, it's time to start adding a bit onto all our estimates of how long we need to re-awaken, each time we're yanked back online and deadened by all that urgent noise and chaos...
Those are great questions, Mike, and absolutely re the "runway" of walking, flushing our systems of whatever, all of it. Everything has a time to transition over.
For the cabin time and similar times, I've always worked hard on being able to switch over really fast because, having kids, I have to be efficient with the time I've got to work. But I've been letting that go a bit more recently. The drive up there is about an hour and a half, so that helps some with transition time. And then I've got to unpack water, food, sleeping gear, firewood, etc. By then it's usually toward evening and I go walk to the river with some tea and watch sunset and then ...
You don't need to know each detail. Let's say overnight. By morning, I notice when I reach for my phone and turn it off unless I want to take a photo. But it wasn't until the 3rd morning that I felt creativity start to stir again, after letting my entire self just sit and rest with the river for a couple of days. That felt good, but it did take giving myself that time.
And you're right -- both you and Barb. I've read that before about it taking 7 days to detach ourselves from work mode to vacation, and I don't think we get enough time to really de-condition our awareness, attention, presence. I'd take more time but these cabins have a 3-night limit per stay. :)
This makes me think of task switching and the term I can't quite recall for that attentional drag of the thing you were just doing when you turn to another thing. It's still hanging onto a bit of your brain and it's hard to get back to where you were. Extend that from minutes or hours to days and that attentional drag--de-poisoning--may be somewhat the same. I read a while back that we need two-week vacations because it takes the first seven days to let go of work enough to be fully in vacation mode. Ack.
I can't recall that term either but task-switching (really trying hard to get out of the habit of calling it multitasking) is something I think about all the time now, because maybe it's age or maybe it's my post-Covid brain but I feel like I can feel like the drag, almost physically. And how hard it is to switch. To be able to just do one thing, sink into it, feels like a luxury.
Beautiful and true, as always 🌙
Thank you, Lindsey. 🙏🧡
tracking mountain lions!!
It really is something else! The muddy print picture was of -- we surmised -- a very young mountain lion walking alongside probably a mother mountain lion in the mud next to a river underneath a bridge. So cool!
I came across something this week that said prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) used to love by running water and listen to it.. It made me think, this man who had the “divine” guidance (or inspiration or personal mission or whatever you’d like to call it) even with all that what he had to do in his life, used to love and sit and find solace by running water.. What would that make of us?
It also made a mental image of this inspired human, still finding the need to empty himself by a running stream.. I just that this love of running water, means something..
Oh, I love that. Thank you for sharing. Having just gotten back from this time, all I can think about are the hours I spent by running water (writing something about it), and I'll hazard a guess that anyone who's done it and let themselves sink into it has found that they walked away with far more -- connection, depth, perception, insight, grounding, whatever it all is -- than they left behind.
I, too, love that the running water means something. I like how you put that, finding the need to empty himself by a running stream.
I sometimes worry that my children barely remember what it is to live without technology. I tried to create opportunities for them to live stretches without it, but it felt like trying to patch a leaking dam with a band-aid. I barely remember it myself anymore and I miss it. Ironically, I've wasted hours of my life searching the internet for listings for raw land for sale out of a vain hope that someday I'll decamp to a little cabin off the grid on a regular basis. But to do that I'd have to accumulate extra money, which requires me not to be there. So, here I am...
The escaping to land and a cabin -- which obviously I take advantage of whenever I can! including the cabin my stepdad built on land he owned way up in the mountains decades ago -- comes up a LOT in these conversations. Which I think is useful even just as an indication of what we crave in our lives. 🧡
Amen to every word
🙏🧡
Hi Antonia,
I have followed a similar path with technology. I waited to get a “smart” phone until I lived in Atlanta, GA and kept getting lost and having to call my sister so that she could check the map on her smart phone and tell me how to get home. My kids didn’t get phones until high school, when I legitimately felt like I couldn’t hold out any longer. I silence all but texts and calls. My Airbnb throws a bit of a wrench in this as I need notifications on for that, and when I have guests, I have to have my phone on at night if something comes up with the house. Ugh. I guess, the practice, as you say, is to come back over and over to the world, to myself, to the other selves who share my life, to be there/here as much as possible. Enjoy your cabin!
My sister rents a Truro car and has the same issue. Especially if you want to list yourself as flexible it's impossible to get away from.
Finding balance with ourselves while dealing with the demands of the world we have to survive in ... a never-ending process.
Heading out in a couple hours. I will, and thank you!
Yes! No doubt you are in the midst of enjoying now:)
I was! And am now back. Trying to hang onto the restoration I found there ...
Yes, hanging on to the restoration (sometimes for what feels like dear life) is a thing. I have yet to find a way to transition smoothly (can we even do this? Is holding myself to that standard foolish?) from quiet and solitude to noise and the world. May you make your way with much compassion and gentleness towards yourself.
🙏💞
Beautiful photos! I love finding tracks. We don't have wolves here but even finding a raccoon track of prints down a sandy trail makes me feel alive, because I'm seeing their story. It's been a fight for me with the smartphone because it's where I "found my people" in my twenties... and I still visit some of the ones I met back then! That's where I was this weekend. I try to keep a good balance ... Arnold Schwarzenegger says to mind how screen time makes you feel; when I find a site is feeding me outrage or dopamine hits, I step away. That has been working for me lately.
The education coordinator for Swan Valley Connections is really great and really, really into squirrels. 🐿️ Her enthusiasm for them is infectious. "Come for the mountain lions and wolves, stay for the squirrels and macroinvertebrates," she says, and it's so true. The little stuff is fascinating.
Arnie's such a good influence. I have tremendous respect for him -- even before seeing your amazing shirt! I like his focus on paying attention to our own needs and how stuff makes us feel.
Like others, I don't want to add to the noise, but I wanted to let you know how much I appreciated this post. I've been reading on Substack for quite a while, but writing only since January. I appreciate how Notes has introduced writers to me, but I'm finding that even this relatively healthier social media channel also leaves me feeling icky and drained. You articulated why that is, and it was helpful for me to read your words this weekend. I hope you are in the quiet, not seeing these words until you return. So glad to have found your writing.
Thank you! And I'm glad to see you hear, and inspired by your logo --rooted, green, and growing. I suppose we each have to find ways to keep us both rooted and growing. I like how cheery people seem to be on Notes, and am glad it's a place for people to share, but for me, yeah, it doesn't even matter what's on there, it leaves me feeling icky and drained. Exactly that. Thank you! I took a longer walk than usual this morning, taken in by hilarious antics of groups of flickers among some trees. I hope you've got some quiet, too.
I’m glad to have stumbled into the newsletter of a fellow dumbphone owner! I find that’s my greatest defense from a slide into a distracted, fractured dash-to-day. But I too still need to be invigorated and re-enlivened now and again. I’ve reflected lately how paddling, socializing, and trying new things make me feel that aliveness.
Now that the schools have that number, I feel okay leaving the smartphone at home (it's a slow transition). Went for a walk today with just the dumb phone--which I am calling Sane Phone--and felt SO much lighter and better. A nicer walk than I've had in quite a while, even or especially when I couldn't take a photo of things I saw.
I'm glad to hear of other people's access to aliveness, of being conscious of aliveness. That helps for me, to be aware of what keeps it there.
SANE PHONE! I love that and will definitely whip it out next time someone teases me for mine.
Someone: “What is THAT?”
Me: “Oh, this? My sane phone?”
I mean, come on, would you rather be smart or sane?
RIGHT?! 😂💖
I am so much in tune with your thoughts here Nia. The digital nudges have surpassed their expectations and transpired into digital ‘thuds’ now. It is impossible to own multiple smart devices and not to pay back the cost in currency of attention. That’s the trade off of modern technology I suppose. We pay for all the things that we don’t require at all.
Although the world is noisy and we feel like running away to live among the wolves and the owls, the squirrels and the magpies- I am still grateful that I could find you and the others and to be able to walk this solitary path together for however long we are destined to. Lots of love and peace to you dear Nia. 💜🌼
Swarna! Digital thuds! What a perfect description. You know, my family and friends have long since given up on me ever answering my phone. I turned the sound off years ago, too, and then turned off the vibrate notification thing because it made me anxious every time it "nudged" me. Felt more like an electric shock, but "thud" is perfect.
I am incredibly grateful for you, meeting you and getting to converse in these ways and to be able to read your incredible writing. It's those things I thought of as I reminded myself of what I personally have gained from the existence of this platform. So, so much. 🧡🕯️🧚
Nia, I wish I could be untethered enough from the brutal modern life to throw my smart device into the nearest lake and roam around the wilderness safely. But the reality is much more complicated than this idealist self who wants to be free, maybe that’s our predicament like it was our ancestors, to dislike the very thing that takes us away from ourselves. I long for all the cacophony to stop but there is just way too much stimulation even after been off social media since last 4 years.
But then I also need to acknowledge, as you did, that we might have never known each other and I would have never been a witness to your firebrand consciousness if we weren’t here on this platform. Maybe in all its weirdness there is still balance in this world that can flow and create silos of experiences even through a manmade invention.
"Maybe that’s our predicament like it was our ancestors, to dislike the very thing that takes us away from ourselves" -- that sounds exactly it. The thing that takes us away from ourselves. And how we exist with it while staying *ourselves." You always put it so well! I'm so grateful for you, Swarna. 💖🕯️🧚
Nia its your voice and words that brings about the best in me. 💜
And yours in me, my friend. 💖🧚
Thank you for this. You remind me I haven't been to my few nights without screens in the woods for way too long - in 2021 & 22 I went every four months. So when I get back. But most of today was White Sands with no cell service, and despite a grumbly child (who just reminded me he rolled down the dunes, not just sledded), so I am grateful for this.
That sounds absolutely beautiful! Sledding and rolling both. :)
I think it was Pico Iyer who said that people are careful about taking cars in for a checkup and oil change every 3-4 months, but not ourselves. (He goes to a monastery 3-4 times a year for a few days.) I hope you get to the woods when you need it!
Thanks, me too!
Thank you for writing this. I relate to so much of this. My head has been feeling noisy lately, and it's making me realise I'm neurodivergent. I jumped at the chance to go cat-sit for a friend for a month and a half. It's in another big city, but a city with parks and small forests I can walk in, and I'll be alone, which should help dial down the noise. (I've also had my gmail for around 20 years now!)
Gmail cohort!
Having a cat around can be pretty calming in and of itself. My kid and I got a 40-minute session in a cat cafe recently, and I honestly felt full of endorphins or oxytocin or whatever it is that make you feel all light-headed and happy.
Dealing with noise and crowds and social gatherings has been increasingly overwhelming recently. I'm not sure what it is with me personally but I'm pretty sure we didn't evolve for this.
yeah, I'm hoping the cat and the change of scene and all the plants in her balcony will be great for me. I've always found crowds and groups difficult, and now I'm accepting it will never get any easier, and that's fine!
Cheers to that! We find ways to care for ourselves and support one another and do our best. 🧡😻
To feel alive. That seems important.
Last fall while bike riding along the river I rested for a few minutes at an old picnic bench by a stand of trees. Looking down I noticed someone had carved the following words into the top of the bench: "I wanna feel again."
I have a like-hate relationship with technology. I like it as a tool, not as a lifestyle. But the people who incessantly peddle technology to us want it to be our world ($$$), and for the most part, we have surrendered to them. Just like with the automobile, we are surrendering to technology our entire way of being in the world. We no longer have to walk, to think deeply, to create, or when it's inconvenient, even to feel.
Just look at what progress has brought about! The Cosmos itself will someday bow to us! Maybe then our mission will be complete!
Whew. "I wanna feel again." Talk about a cry for help. Too many of us are there too often.
Absolutely, 100% with you on the "like-hate," tool vs. lifestyle relationship. So, so much has been surrendered. And yet we keep going with it all. It's heavy. I'm going to take these words with me to that river in a couple of days. 🧡
That past paragraph -- you're a natural poet, Kenneth!