When Stefan returned from his recent trip to Scotland, he was practically glowing from all that he’d seen and experienced. He’d gotten to absorb a wide array of art galleries, beautiful architecture, castles and monuments. There was a definite spark in his eye and spring in his step, despite being quite jet lagged and recovering from a bout of food poisoning.
Ordinarily, I would have attributed his joyful enthusiasm to the novelty of travelling, but he’s travelled quite a bit over the past year to a number of different conferences and had not come home this excited. In the words of Julia Cameron, author of “The Artist’s Way,” he’d clearly filled his well with a bounty of experiences and now it was overflowing in an incredibly positive way.
He attributed the difference to the fact that he’d stayed off his phone for the majority of his time in Scotland.
In contrast, I’d been down with a bad case of the “mehs” while he’d been away. If you’ve seen the Pixar movie “Soul,” you might remember the scene where Joe takes the unborn soul 22 to the Hall of Everything in the hopes of finding her Spark. They try out a wide range of activities, but regardless of their difficulty or her proficiency, her response to all of them was “meh.”
Likewise, I couldn’t seem to get motivated about anything during that time, even activities that normally bring me a lot of joy.
The less motivation I had, the more I seemed to find myself doomscrolling on social media or mindlessly playing my favourite videogame. I was certainly consuming content and experiences, but they were all simulated ones that lacked soul-satisfying sustenance.
Instead of filling my well, it felt like I was polluting it and, by the time Stefan got back, I was looking and feeling pretty miserable.
The experiment
Stefan and I have discussed our phone habits before. Like most folks in our digital age, we recognize that we spend far too much time with our faces glued to our screens, but it’s been hard to break bad habits.
We decided as a starting point to exile our phones from the bedroom. No more puttering about or doomscrolling on our phones before we went to sleep. We’d plug in our phones to charge away from the bed and get ourselves an old-fashioned alarm clock to use instead of the one on the phone.
Simple… or so I thought.
The dreams
On the first night of having the phone away from my bed, I must have woken up three or four times. I’m usually a pretty solid sleeper, so I was surprised by how restless and unsettled I was.
Maybe it was just a fluke.
On the second night, I had full-on nightmares of trying to protect myself and the people I loved from invasive goo monsters. Again, I woke up multiple times, but this time I would slip back into the next chapter of this same bizarre horror story. In one memorable episode, my younger sister was a dancer-ninja-assassin training a group of foster kids to kill the goo things by flinging sewing needles at them.
It only got weirder from there.
On the third night, my nightmare was centred around trying to navigate my life and a confusing new city without my phone. I needed to cancel a dentist appointment… without my phone. I wanted to use Google Maps to get to another part of town… without my phone. I wanted to pay for something in a store… without my phone.
Ahh… could this be the source of my restless anxiety?
Keep in mind, I wasn’t actually trying to go cold turkey on phone use at all. Apart from trying to reduce my social media use a bit more, I was still carrying my phone with me everywhere I went, since I still needed it to track medications, buzz in deliveries to our apartment and similar mundane activities.
All I had done was committed to not having the phone next to me before going to bed… and my unconscious mind completely freaked out in response.
The addiction is real
Thankfully, the wild anxiety dreams have now subsided for the most part and I’m back to sleeping normally again with my phone charging on the dresser on the opposite side of the room.
I am, however, still quite disturbed by my body’s reaction to such a simple change. I knew I was on the phone more than I wanted to be, but I hadn’t suspected quite that level of screen addiction.
Ever since high school, some thirty-odd years ago, I have been a part of the online world. I went from connecting with folks through local online bulletin board systems (BBSs) to connecting with folks through social media from around the world.
For the first 15 years of my career, I built websites and communicated on behalf of organizations, large and small, through email marketing and social media. In my downtime, I’ve spent years and years playing World of Warcraft. I like playing through the stories within the fantasy world and my light interactions with guildmates.
The online world was my ecosystem and I didn’t see anything wrong with that.
But something has changed, particularly in the last few years. The online world feels more demanding and corruptive. Rather than feeding the soul with new connections and experiences, it feels increasingly like it’s chipping away pieces of it one attention-stealing moment at a time.
With this in mind, here are some of the other tactics that I’m using to better control how I experience the online world:
Whatever it is, it can wait - FOMO (aka “fear of missing out”) has become an integral part of our culture. The fear is that if we aren’t regularly checking social media, we’re going to miss some vital information. As an entrepreneur, I have really struggled with this lately because not being on top of everything feels irresponsible in our current news climate. But, instead of impulsively checking social media in every other moment, I try to check it on my laptop the same way I might check my email. By engaging with it more deliberately, it feels less like a mindless leisure activity and more like work.
Turn off all notifications - The makers of these apps know that they can use curiosity to suck you back in. Did someone comment on my post? Is there news in that group I like to follow? What am I missing out on? Again, none of these things are actually as urgent as the little red alert makes them out to be and, by hiding notifications, you can better decide when you want to engage with the online world and when you’d rather focus on the real one.
A little friction can be a good thing - One of the most appealing things about the online world is how easy everything feels. Instead of wandering the aisles of a grocery store, you can simply type in what you’re looking for and be done with it. There can, however, be something magical about that sense of discovery that comes with interacting with the real world. For instance, this past weekend we wandered down to the Beltline to pick up a few items we missed from our online grocery order. Not only did we pick up some multi-colour carrots that we hadn’t planned on, but also ended up trying out a buffet-style hot pot place for the first time. It was a good reminder of the spontaneous bits of adventure that can happen when one allows tasks to be just a little less easy and efficient.
Final thoughts
I don’t think it’s realistic to believe that I’m ever going to be able to completely cut out phone use from my life. The online world is far too interwoven with our real one in our culture to completely escape it.
I can, however, be in choice about how I incorporate the phone and the online world into my life. I can make those interactions conscious decisions as opposed to unconscious impulses.
In this way, I am putting a filter between my internal creative well and the online sludge that threatens it. I’m still struggling with some feelings of “meh,” but at least I feel as if I’ve committed to the actions necessary to dig myself out of it.
Don’t forget that our next CreativiTEA workshop is coming up in a couple weeks!
Presence through Painting
Sunday, September 27th, from 1-3pm
Atelier Artista (4th floor)
cSPACE Marda Loop
1721 29 Avenue SW, Calgary
Tickets are $30 and include all art supplies, tea and delicious goodies.