Edition #134: Disconnecting to Reconnect
Plus, what's the matter with men, happiness versus wholeness, and animals as produce
A Note From the Editor
Time is a funny thing. Have you ever had one of those experiences where something happens to you—a memorable encounter, a date, a revelation—and it shifts your entire reality? When recounting the event in retrospect, you assume it happened at least a month ago but upon further inspection, you discover it actually happened last week. How can that be possible, you ask yourself, reviewing the seven days passed since the initial event. Conversely, there are whole months that feel like a single week, further dizzying our precarious relationship with the passing of time.
A friend of mine has a theory on this. He says our current reality is based upon whatever’s happened to us within a two-week span. I can attest to this—as a freelance writer, for example, if I have a few new projects come in during any given period of time I feel on top of the world, safe and secure, but if a week or two passes without any signs of a new project I can easily become convinced that I will never get work again. Our minds can only sustain so much fresh information and our emotions are ripe, coloring our view of the season at hand. I like the two-week theory and the more I’ve pondered it, the more accurate I find it. There’s relief in this, too—this won’t matter to you in two weeks, I often remind myself. Feelings go away, new distractions arise, circumstances shift beneath our feet.
It was, much to my surprise, only eight days ago when I made the decision on a Wednesday evening. I’d just attended an Italian-themed plant-based pop-up dinner hosted by a chef friend of mine. Throughout the evening, I relished in the warmth of good company—a table full of funny, sweet people, some of whom were close friends and others who had the potential to be, and a room full of tourists and locals, many of whom looked familiar. We waved to each other; we got up and walked from table to table offering cheek kisses and well wishes. We ate arancini mopped up with pesto, speared creamy pasta with our forks, scooped spoonfuls of banana ice cream from a puddle of bitter espresso. Everyone, it seemed, was ravenous that evening. The music crooned softly in the background, the wine flowed and flowed. By the time I got home, I was properly tipsy and satiated, feeling that particular buzz that only comes after a night that makes you remember how sweet it is to be alive.
And then I did what I always do at night—I grabbed my phone and began to scroll on Instagram. Here, the story gets more predictable and less interesting; I was drunk, I was scrolling, and I landed on the page of a girl who lives in the same town as I do in Costa Rica, but whom I don’t actually know in person. She’s beautiful, naturally, but her life is aesthetically pleasing in a way that I can’t quite comprehend because I’ve never seen anything like it before. It feels natural—not ultra-curated or expertly edited but simple beauty with a touch of the barefoot, bare-faced, tropical fruit and sand sentiment that is in fashion here. While looking at her page, one gets the impression that a talented person who is madly in love with her follows her around at all times, snapping candids or gently staged shots at the most opportune moments. On this particular evening, she was enjoying a dinner similar to the one I had just attended but more heavily documented and with an artistic undercurrent. My buzz dimmed; how is everyone she hangs out with an artist who could moonlight as a model, I wondered, and where did this dinner take place? And why hadn’t I met these people yet?
I didn’t need to analyze my reaction to the moment to know the senseless comparison was petty and destructive; the opposite of the mindset I’d been so carefully attempting to sustain in the last few months. Because I had ingested multiple glasses of wine I didn’t sit on the decision until morning, I simply deleted Instagram off my phone right then and there. Nearly all of my friends have done this in the past but I never have. It isn’t because I’ve never needed a break, but because Instagram is my only form of social media. I don’t Tweet or otherwise engage on Twitter, I’ve never had TikTok and I don’t want to become an obsolete, disconnected person, so Instagram has remained my lifeline throughout the years. Plus, I like the attention Instagram affords me when I post.
The dopamine rush, I realized the day after I deleted Instagram from my phone, was the real reason I knew I needed a break from the platform. Temporarily moving to a different country where I don’t speak the native language has caused inevitable pockets of loneliness. Curiously, I feel less lonely here than I do when I’m down in New York, but I am certainly not immune to the standard human reactions of relative solitude. As a result of this, I’d become more active on Instagram than usual, sharing little snippets from my days here more and more often—surf updates, updates on the freckles that have begun to conquer my face, updates on learning how to flip a pancake in the air. The number of people who were seeing my Instagram stories was going up and up, providing further satisfaction each time I posted. The algorithm seemed to be saying: Keep up the good work, sweetie. None of this felt bad, but it did cause me to reach for my phone far more often than usual. When my 30-minute-per-day timer would pop up on my screen after what I was sure was only 5 minutes, I’d ignore it once, twice, three times. Then, indefinitely.
The masochist that lives within me found cause for alarm in the amount of satisfaction I was deriving from these meaningless digital pings of approval. I was especially attuned to what was happening because I’ve been working on noticing how often I derive my personal satisfaction from romantic endeavors—as in, I’m much more easily pleased with myself when someone is desiring me or pursuing me romantically (this is a great essay on that notion). While I felt I had been making progress in moving away from this habit of over-emphasizing romantic encounters in relation to self-worth, a little voice inside of me was saying: But you’re just replacing attention from those suitors with attention from people on Instagram, aren’t you? No matter what format it’s in—being asked on a date or being told by a random person on the internet that I look happy—the end result is the same; external approval to assuage any sense of discomfort with self. This becomes habitual before we even notice what’s happening, like the way we used to be able to navigate the streets without a little voice on our cellphones telling us to turn left, then right.
Miraculously, it has only been eight days since I haven’t had access to Instagram. Miraculously, this small adjustment has significantly altered the shape of my daily life and my internal resting state. On day one I was supremely agitated; moodier than I’ve been since arriving in Costa Rica. I kept checking my phone only to be disappointed by its blank screen—I’m not a perpetual texter, so there would be far fewer notifications waiting for me without the social network. I tried breathing exercises and stretching, but nothing made me feel better that day. I decided ot lock my phone away and go for a long walk on the beach followed by a long swim, during which I got lost in the depths of my mind, carefully recounting everything that has happened during the past I’ve lived in New York. This helped; by the time I returned to my still-blank phone, I was far less agitated, driving through a dreamy daze.
More surprises arose in the days that followed. I met a handsome man at a birthday party. We spent the evening talking, laughing, and dancing. We exchanged numbers afterward and when he crossed my mind the next day, I realized I couldn’t look him up on Instagram—an entirely pleasant realization. My world grew significantly smaller. Without the digital tether, I forgot about the existence of many people whom I tell myself I know, but who really are just vaguely familiar strangers. I considered how much smaller my social circle would get if I were to remain off Instagram. Who would actually put forth the effort to keep up with me when I wasn’t served to them on a curated, perpetually available digital platter? There were, and are, many days I find myself agitated, short-tempered, and more easily annoyed. I imagine this is how smokers feel when they attempt to kick a nicotine addiction cold turkey, except I’ve never considered myself a person who is “addicted” to social media. It has been a slow drip, a habit I don’t want to classify as a habit-forming on a subconscious level.
Despite the agitation, I know this little experiment is revealing some vital, heretofore concealed information about myself that is already proving useful. If there is one thing in life I wish for it is that everything I do, I do with intention—I never want to fall into the trap of mindless decision-making; I want to understand why I’m doing what I’m doing. I want to decide, consciously, how I spent my time and how I spend my life, for isn’t that decision-making ability one of the only distinguishing factors of being human? I’m not sure how much longer I’ll remain off Instagram, but while I do, I’ll continue to notice how it feels to disconnect from one, arguably false world in order to reconnect with another one. The real one; the one that is right before our eyes, waiting.
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Cheers, my dears, and as always thanks for reading. In two weeks’ time, I’ll begin to paywall a portion of this newsletter each week for paying subscribers only. There will still be a truncated free version, but paying subscribers will be the ones to receive the full edition each week.
I know I’ve said it before and possibly to a point of irritation, but I work as a full-time freelance writer. This newsletter is not what sustains my livelihood, but being humbly compensated for it has allowed me to continue to put the time and resources needed to read, write and edit content for these new editions each week. If you’re like me, you probably hesitate to pay for something you’ve been getting for free. I totally get that! —but the only way I am able to continue to invest time into writing this newsletter is with the support of paid subscribers. The time I spend writing this is time I don’t spend taking on new work, pitching stories, etc.
As a final note on this front, I’m spending 2023 laser-focused on my walking toward my longer-term writing goals—writing scripts for screenplays and stage plays. I haven’t felt this excited and motivated to write creatively in a while, and I hope I’ll have the chance to share some of my produced work with you all this year. Now that I have a larger aim in mind for my writing career, I’m being even more stringent on the things I choose to spend my time on, which all ladders up to why paying support of this newsletter is vital for its continuation. If you are able, I hope you’ll consider upgrading to a paid subscription.
And thanks again for reading—might I suggest you buy some cheap pancake mix from the grocery store this weekend to make yourself an unnecessarily large stack of pancakes slathered in butter and syrup for breakfast? I cannot stop making pancakes lately and it is such a satisfying way to start the way. You deserve it.
Three Pieces of Content Worth Consuming
What’s The Matter With Men? When a dear friend sent me this article insisting I read it so we could discuss, I knew it was going to be good. It wasn’t what I initially expected—not another regurgitated take on the perils of toxic masculinity, but a data-backed case for the dire situation men increasingly find themselves in today. Admittedly, I was not aware of many of the circumstantial points made in the piece—men dropping out of the workforce in staggering numbers, women outperforming men in school and in the workplace, and men committing suicide at higher rates. What makes this one worth reading is the thesis of the argument: All of these factors aren’t a result of the “deconstruction of the American man,” as conservatives argue, or of “toxic masculinity,” as liberals argue, but of something like the inevitability of a world in which opportunities are no longer exclusively for certain kinds of men. Or, as the article puts it, today’s men are being hit with “the workings of the same structural forces that apply to every other group.”
Cheerios: A Poem. A beautiful, simple poem about aging, our perspectives on each other, and how humans process everything in relativity.
On Happiness Versus Wholeness. If you don’t have a lot of time to read a full-fledged article today, this short quote is well worth reading. A meditation on the (very Western) idea that we should all be striving for happiness; and a point on how we teach our kids to strive for happiness as though it were the baseline emotion we should feel at all times. I’d never thought of happiness versus wholeness, but I’m going to be spending some more time percolating on the notion.
Perhaps You Should…Try Out This First Date Idea
First dates are weird, especially at restaurants. Every move seems to be a choreographed display of your truest self under pressure—what to order? Who’s paying? Who is friendly to the waiters, who gets up to pee three times an hour (me), who’s drinking wine and who isn’t? This first date idea is a silly, albeit quite compelling alternative. I also endorse watching the sunset together as another low-stakes first-date idea. Bonus points if someone brings wine.
**Bonus Content** (Animals, Remixed)
Why is this so oddly satisfying?
Also, LOL at capitalism, a goldmine for Trader Joe’s enthusiasts, a bop, drooling over the hair accessories/general aesthetic of this music video, and this blew my mind.
A Quote From A Book You Should Read:
“In the upstairs den of her parents’ house, she asked so many questions, inquiring about what I liked, what I thought about someone, what I wanted in the future. It doesn’t take much to come into your own; all it takes is someone’s gaze. It’s not totally accurate to say that I felt seen. It was more that: Beheld by her, I learned to become myself. Her interest actualized me.”
-Bliss Montage by Ling Ma
This newsletter is best served with a side of conversation, so drop your opinions, reflections, and thoughts in the comments below and let’s get to talking.
Or, share the most thought-provoking piece from today’s edition with someone you love, then call them up to discuss, debate, and percolate. As a wise woman once said, “Great minds discuss ideas.