Midsummer Unplugged 🖋 Alongside Letter #4
Hello!
Well, true to form, I took an unexpected break from writing here, but… summer, right? Or I guess, for me specifically, midsummer.
July is always a bit of a weird month. This is the first year I was able to acknowledge the weirdness — the funky moods, the vague wondering where the year went. And in the middle of the month in the middle of the year comes my birthday. I like birthdays and the significance of celebrating another year of life (or, when I’m feeling just a tiny bit dark, another year of surviving this weird planet). But I find myself creeping ever closer to 40, and I finally get my dad’s frequent dadism, “I tell you what, time does NOT stand still.”
This year, I decided to embrace this weird month with two particular practices: start a longform writing project, and take the whole month off of social media. The writing project was to draft 40,000 words toward a potential essay collection / book idea. I didn't hit my goal, but I crossed 10,000, so I’ll call it a tiny win. The time off social media though… that was long overdue.
***
My personal rule of life is pinned above my desk. I wrote it at the end of my spiritual direction training, and rule #2 is Turn Down the Noise. Is there anything more noisy than our internet feeds?
I don’t know about you, but despite my best efforts to moderate, InstaTwitterBook still brings me back with a dopamine hit of novelty and possible community. Perhaps I’ll read a really beautiful thought from a writer I like or see a distant friend’s vacation photos. Maybe there will be some important topic raging through Twitter that I can't ignore. Maybe I’ll get the latest Delta variant updates and CDC guidance and unsolicited opinions from Internet randos. Maybe I’ll just get FOMO or feel the ache of missing faraway friends.
What do you do when the same platforms that give you a connection to life-giving community tend to either amp up anxiety and anger or numb you out? I value the creativity of the social internet, but I find myself lapsing into compare and consume mode. I watch people post beautiful photos and thoughtful captions on Instagram, and feel like I should do the same, or nothing at all. I see conversations on Twitter that intrigue me, but by the time I've processed, everyone else has moved on.
Not to mention all those voices get awfully loud. And there’s the challenge for me… if a chorus of voices are telling me what I should be thinking about and commenting on, that interrupts the long, quiet, internal work. For me, too much noise gets in the way of discerning what is mine to carry. It's hard to do deep work when I’m mentally preoccupied with the latest shocking tweet.
That might be more than you wanted to know about my social media dilemma. The short story is I unplugged for a month. By the end of July dipped back into Instagram. A week into August and I still haven’t checked Facebook or Twitter.
Another item on my rule of life is Creating > Consuming. It's a helpful gut check to tell me when I need a break from the internet machine. And it's something I hope to live out when I do re-enter those spaces.
***
Here’s what I did do in July:
My friend Kaitlyn came to visit us for a week. We did summer New England things, like eating our first lobster rolls. We caught up at a coffee shop, stayed up too late watching the Olympics, and spent an afternoon at the beach. There is something so lovely about being with people you’ve known for at least a decade, friends who knew you pre-marriage and pre-moving and pre-so many other things.
I wrote my 10,000 words, grumbled inside about how bad they were, and texted with my writer friends about unproductive writing days. I kept it pretty low stakes, and worked on accepting regular life things that get in the way of writing, and made plans to keep adding to the word count.
On my birthday, Chris texted a bunch of friends and invited them to a spontaneous ice cream hangout. I’d been feeling weirdly lonely for much of the month, so seeing people I love show up was so good for my soul. We took over a corner of the park across the street, and stayed out way too late, until it was too dark and buggy to stick around.
I bought a cake mix with good intentions just because baking a birthday cake seemed like a fun idea. I still haven’t done it though. Maybe I’ll just save it for a random celebration, or turn it into something for Chris’ birthday next week.
I kept up with the news through email lists. It turns out I can still be an informed citizen without social media, and I can only handle one or two big topics a day. (Shout out to The Flip Side for forcing me to look beyond my bias and the NYT morning update email for excellent COVID reporting)
Most of all, I lived life. In the now, in this place, in this skin.
***
I hope you’ve been able to work and rest and live this summer. I hope you have been able to unplug and have good conversations, face to face, or read, or create, or go to the beach, or sleep in, or do nothing at all.
And if the world feels a little noisy, might I recommend turning things down a little bit? It’s different for everyone… maybe social media isn’t a big time consumer for you, but an oppressively busy schedule is. Maybe there is an invitation to let something go for a few weeks and see what happens. Or maybe there’s something you’ve wanted to do, like start a project or learn a craft or sign up for an exercise class, and something’s gotta go to free up the time.
I know as for me, I’m hoping to get back to consistently writing this letter again.
And maybe — maybe — if I have time, I’ll go back on Twitter.
Or maybe not. :)
Wishing you peace and rest and end-of-summer adventures,
~Jen
A few good things...
Listening: For further reflection on the topic of unplugging from social media, I really loved the discussion on the July 26th episode of The Real Question Podcast. (The Internet, with special guest John Green) It inspired me to reinstate app limits on my phone and write this letter instead of scrolling Insta. ;) You can find it here (scroll alllll the way to the bottom) or on your favorite podcast app.
Watching: I have very much have loved going back to the movies this summer, and I'm especially glad I got to catch In the Heights and Summer of Soul on the big screen. Both so joyful in their own ways. You can still catch Summer of Soul on Hulu, if you can't find a showing near you or aren't ready to go back to the a theater yet.
Reading: Very slowly working through Reading While Black by Esau McCauley, and this quote made me go get a pencil:
A theology of mourning allowed Rev. Dr. King to look on the suffering of the people in Birmingham and refuse to turn away... A theology of mourning never allows us the privilege of apathy... Mourning is intuition that things are not right -- that more is possible. To think that more is possible is an act of political resistance in a world that wants us to believe that consumption is all there is.
Cooking: Fresh pesto, because our basil plants are insane right now. I made some for dinner tonight. I can still taste nothing but garlic and I can't decide if that's awesome or annoying.