goodbye, internet
A couple of quick announcements before we dive in this week:
SF Bay Area Bridge Club is Monday, August 17, from 7 - 8:30pm PST. Technically, this is a local chapter, but it’s virtual so come out come out wherever you are. You don’t have to be sober or have accumulated any sober time to participate. We will love you exactly as you are, however you are.
Mini Writing Workshop (free with yours truly) next Saturday, August 22, 10:30am - 12pm PST. This is a generative style workshop based on the Amherst Writer’s Method. It’s appropriate for all levels of writers, even you brand newbies. Would love to see you. Questions? Curiosities? Email me.
Onward:
First class, first semester of grad school: Someone asked for general writing advice from our instructor. “Delete your social media,” she said, without missing a beat. “Do you think Mark Zuckerberg wants you to write a book?”
This, articulated in a way I’d never considered.
I didn’t quit social media then. I dug in deeper (who would have thought that I, when presented with an exquisitely designed distraction machine, would be the type of person who has trouble moderating?). Most other instructors swore that without it, you could basically kiss getting published away. So I followed writerly people on Instagram, shared literary articles on Facebook, tried to project myself out into the world as a person whose opinions about these things mattered.
Do you know what I didn’t do? Get anything published (OK, barely).
It’s almost four years later, and her words still ring in my ears louder than pretty much anything any other instructor said. The difference is, now I’m finally taking her advice.
*
In Pandemia, I forget things. My recall is shot.
Basic tasks at work feel insurmountable. Everything takes twice as long.
My eyes dance over that same paragraph over and over; reading, my forever refuge, is impossible.
I am so tired, all the time.
*
At first I thought my memory lapses were due to my advanced age (36). Maybe this is what happens, I thought to myself. Maybe it’s typical to forget the names of films you watched two days ago, the names of your favorite authors, how to write a simple sentence. But it wasn’t until I pulled into the Starbucks parking lot in Orange County, and in the 20 seconds it took to walk from car to counter to place my order, I’d already forgotten my mom’s order (to be fair, she asked me for a drink with about 47 syllables in it), that I got suspicious.
My memory has always been sharp. I’m particularly good with sequences of numbers (though utterly useless, I still remember the phone numbers of elementary school best friends), I never forget a face (which is why those people who are like “have we met?” after we indeed have met multiple times drive me legit bonkers), and in school I always tested well without having to really study because the information was just…there (also unhelpful to me now, but I appreciated the smooth-sailing at the time). My memory was reliable, something I could lean on, trust.
In this increased fumbling for words and recollections, I find myself on shaky ground. Everything is awful, and I know that life in Pandemia is working something over on my subconscious in ways I probably won’t understand for a long time. The specter of the election looms. I’m afraid of getting sick, I’m terrified of losing my people. I walk around with the weight of our collective grief threatening to choke me out at any minute. And I’m questioning how to be a person in this new world. I want my life to be a contribution. But lately I feel like I’m treading water, and it’s hard to contribute anything when I’m just trying to stay afloat.
*
On top of this, there’s another grief here, too, and it’s the grief of killing off the future I’d imagined for myself and accepting a new vision of reality. One that is so much more lonesome. One where so many of the day-to-day things that make up a decent life are off the table for a lot longer than I or any of us would like to admit. One of learning to live with the low-level, constant malaise of operating under so much uncertainty.
These last few weeks, my dead memory has coincided with a sense of overwhelm. All I want to do is sleep. Though I don’t check out the way I used to (thank you, sobriety), my brain is still my brain and so of course is doing that thing it is so good at doing and latching onto whatever it can to distract me. Some of that looks like watching all four seasons of High Maintenance on HBO in a week (go watch it, it’s the best). Mostly, it means that I am scrolling harder than ever. It’s hard not to see a connection between my stuttering memory and the amount of information I regularly ingest.
Inside the uncertainty is an opportunity to imagine something new and different. But if I am so full of outside information, there is no space left for imagination. And if I can’t imagine something new and different for myself, for all of us, for this planet, I don’t see how I will get out of bed, let alone be some type of aforementioned contribution. So, starting this afternoon, for 100 days I’m giving up all social media. I’m embarrassed by how nervous this makes me. I’m trying to build this newsletter, for one thing. I’m concerned about “losing followers,” which, spelled out, makes me want to puke, but there’s the truth. I’m going to miss Rebecca Solnit on Facebook, and seeing all of you on Instagram. But I am declaring a reclamation of my attention. I have to discover “who I am without the doing,” as Jocelyn K. Glei asks. I have to create space for what I’m capable of to step forward. I have to confront that thing in me that would forever keep me on the lam from my life, a frightening scenario for someone like me, who has already wasted so much time running.
*
I know I’m not alone inside these or similar reckonings. I know that conversations of “pre-and-post pandemic” realities will haunt the rest of our lives. I know that there is still plenty of awful to come, I know the losses will be incalculable—indeed, they already are. But there’s still so much life to come. No matter how bad it gets, we will keep living, you know? So I’m taking some time to figure that out. How to live. How to keep going.
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 Cirignano, a writer and sobriety advocate in San Francisco, CA.
SMS is reader-funded. The small percentage of readers who pay make the entire publication possible.
You can also support me for free by pressing the little heart button on these posts, sharing this newsletter with others and letting me know how this newsletter helps you. Thank you, truly.
So love this. Every word.
I hear this--especially the loss of imagination from over-information. Emptiness through saturation.