can't get no...

aka: kill your social media

Paul Heyer, Text from Crush, 2020, oil and acrylic on polyester, 44 x 34".

I spent my junior year of college in Granada, Spain. This was 2005, and though Craigslist was a robust entity back in the states, in southern Spain the way you found an apartment was by wandering around the city and ripping phone numbers off those ad posters with people’s contact information fanning out like teeth across the bottom. We were encouraged to not live with other Americans, and I shared a piso with a Spanish woman from Granada and another exchange student from Naples. My room overlooked the same courtyard as another student’s who would become one of my closest friends (to this day!), and when our cheap phones ran out of minutes we would whistle across the courtyard to each other, make plans from our windows, wander about the tiny city ordering too many cafés or tubos of cheap beer with a (free! tapas are free in Granada!) tapa, a generous custom that felt like a miracle every time, even thirteen years later when I returned for a quick visit as a much older and utterly sober thirty-five year old.

In Spain, afternoons are for siesta. Everything except some cafés and restaurants closes for three full hours in the afternoon, and so did the university: I had classes in the morning and evening, and that long-ass break smack dab in the center. What would I do with my free time?

At first I did my best to cram in as much sightseeing as I could. Sometimes this meant dodging the dry southern Spanish heat of of late-summer-early-fall by catching my breath in the cool pews of dark cathedrals. Other times it was climbing up to the Mirador de San Nicolas, staring at the Alhambra and eating gelato while locals played flamenco and tourists fumbled over castanets. More often than not it meant walking, sweating, stuffing my face with overripe figs, feeling even more out of place than I already did by dint of being the only weirdo out on the street.

After some weeks of this, I gave over. I’d come home to my apartment, eat, and lay around. Sometimes I’d do homework. Sometimes I’d watch episodes of Shin-Chan, dubbed in Spanish from Japanese. Sometimes I’d collage, or paint, something I hadn’t had time for in years.

My inner rhythm slowed. I began to unwind.

This was the pre-smart-phone era, and also the year I made a Facebook account, which at the time still looked like this:

Years later I spent another year abroad, this time in the mountains of Northern Thailand, and my rhythm slowed again. Each time I returned to San Francisco after an extended trip away, I vowed to hold onto this sense of slowness. I committed to continuing on in my American city life in a way that honored what had come to be one of my deepest values: Simplicity. And I don’t mean this in the minimalist sense, that aesthetic that’s become ubiquitous in all of our internet feeds, although I do own very few things; more, it’s a choice to live slow, to savor my days, to be present with myself and the people in my orbit, to work hard, but not too much, and ultimately, to take a stand against that thing in our culture that has us feel like something is deeply wrong when we have a few hours of downtime.

You know what is the opposite of these values? Scrolling away my time, which is to say, my life, on social media.

*

The first few weeks after I last logged out of Facebook and Instagram and began my 100 day break, I did a lot of staring at the walls of my bedroom. Large swaths of time, more than I feel comfortable admitting, were suddenly returned to me, and I had an abundance of space in my days. I didn’t know what to do, hence the wall staring. Around 3 or 3:30pm every afternoon, I’d take a break, lay on my bed, and stare. Then I’d refresh the email on my phone dozens of times, as if waiting for an important email from Oprah (I’m pretty sure Oprah would call me, but my lizard brain is a rascal). Even now, over six weeks into my experiment, I find myself diddling around on my phone for…something.

Then, a few weeks in, something else happened. I gave over.

Immediately, I noticed that the quality of my friendships went deeper. I had so much more time for my people, which, these, days, translates to things like long walks and even longer phone calls; writing postcards and overwrought emails; and my new favorite: recording and sending voice and video messages. I started reading again, finishing two books in a week, like the old days. I began ideating a business plan, and developing my work in the world. Instead of worrying about my activism, I began taking action, writing postcards and phone banking. I practically leap out of bed at 5:30 every morning, spending two hours with myself and my creative work (and my coffee). I take a little siesta every afternoon for 20-30 minutes. I go to bed early. I run, I write, I pick up the phone when my parents call.

I am returning to my inner rhythm. And though I can’t talk about this without noting my own privilege and access — a job that was already work-from-home and enough income to afford organic food for me and my dog and a home that I adore among many many many other things — it’s also true that every single one of us can take responsibility for our behavior online.

“There are only two industries that call their customers 'users': illegal drugs and software.”

You understand why the above quote gives me pause.

I had already been mulling this over when I watched The Social Dilemma, that documentary you can’t avoid these days every time you login to Netflix, and where I pulled the above quote. Though highly one-sided and propagandistic, I still recommend it (I’ll recommend anything that asks us to look more critically at the long-term effects of social media on things like our psyches, or, you know, democracy), and watching it absolutely bolstered my resolve to steer clear. The days of innocuous photo sharing and hitting thumbs-up button on your pal’s dumb status update are no more.

Every time I’d come up for air after losing myself in the scroll, I felt worse. Worse about myself, my days, how I was living. Worse toward my fellow humans. Worse about the state of the world. My memory was shot. After getting sober and finally wrangling the demon of anxiety, fear was again keeping me awake at night.

This is not the place from which I think we can build a different nation.

*

I’ve always been a seeker. But it’s taken me many many years to understand that what I was seeking was not some great supernova of insight that would finally reveal to me my purpose and place in the world, but something far more mundane and quotidian. What I was seeking, what I sought to recreate after long periods of time away from home, and what I am infinitely protective of now, was/is a basic sense of satisfaction. Of wanting what I already have. Of going to bed at night with a calm stomach and a quiet heart. Of redirecting my attention when I get caught in the swirl of comparison. Of trusting that the way I do things is the way I do things.

Away from my screen, I am agog at the wonder of small things. The way the neighbors on my block look out for each other, and even Tater (Will across the street regularly leaves treats and toys under our front gate for the little chompers). How the scrub jays screech and wail, the squirrels scamper about with their cheeks popped full of acorns, the spiders slink through still open windows and into the corners of my bedroom in their familiar fall arrival. The way your eyes crinkle above your mask in what I have to believe is the biggest, toothiest smile ever.

What I’m saying is: Time is precious. I’m saying, despite everything, that I am still in love with the world. I’m saying, also, that you wouldn’t believe what arises in the giving over — space! wildness! joy! connection! presence! I’m saying that most people are more good than not. I’m saying that we have a say in this. Still. I’m saying it’s not too late.

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Slow Motion Sober is a newsletter and community for creative types who are sober or curious about sobriety, and all the life-y intersections along the way. It's written by me, Dani, a writer and sobriety advocate in San Francisco, CA. 

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