This is a personal decision (obviously). I am not judging what anyone else does with their time - To be honest, I don’t have the time or desire to do that. I have enough things I am trying to figure out in my own life right now.
Second, I have deleted all social media off of my phone (which I barely used as it was). I will still keep Facebook on my home computer for the time-being because I enjoy using it for long writing and sharing photographs. I just will not being checking it every day.
I have always thought Instagram was really boring but holy shit, TikTok was way too good. It became the perfect distraction anytime I hit a hard moment. Between TikTok, checking emails, responding to text messages, etc. - I barely had any time left in my day and, with that time, my mind was not clear. It was clouded with all this dopamine and stimulus I had been jamming into it throughout the day. I had even started to check my phone in bed - Which made my sleep worse - Which is a very dangerous thing to do with mental health. When my sleep quality declined, things started to fall with it and I knew I had to do something right away. When I was checking my phone a lot, my entire life went on auto-pilot all the time. At a red light? Respond to some text messages. Having a cup of coffee? Watch TikTok for an hour. About to go to bed? Check emails one more time.
I stopped writing entirely when I was like this. I didn’t have the clarity and did not have the patience to do anything. Everything was instant gratification. I was high on these drugs of dopamine and stimulus and, like all addictions, things started to get damaged in my life. I started to rush conversations more. I started to forget to check on others when I hadn’t heard from them in a while. I felt like my life was automated and I absolutely hated it - Even though, I didn’t want to stop taking the drugs and do what it took to get my attention back.
One other really important thing happened.
When I was born, I was born with a hole in my heart. It’s actually pretty common and I had a mitral valve prolapse and heart murmur from it. We watched it closely when I was a child but, when I was around 12-13 years old, my cardiologist told me ‘This heart issue is not going to be a problem. Go out and live a normal life with it and don’t worry about it.’
Fast forward 20 years later and, last month, I went to see my general doctor. She was asking some questions and randomly asked me ‘When was the last time you got an echocardiogram?’
I told her how my doctor had said not to worry about my heart so it had been over 20 years since I had. She quietly said ‘Maybe you should get one just because it’s been so long.’
I am self-employed (though have health insurance) so I juggled around if it was worth the high cost of getting one done. I finally decided it was and went to get it checked out. About a week later, the doctor called me and said ‘Your heart has gotten worse. You have mitral valve regurgitation and it is going to require surgery on your heart soon. If you don’t get the surgery, your heart will keep expanding and lead to heart failure.’
(Not to worry anyone - I have already gotten two opinions from some of the best cardiologists in the country. We are scheduling the surgery to be in the next 12-months - It’s a very low risk surgery and, if all goes well, my heart will be completely fine afterwards. It’s only a 7-day recovery time also)
This was a big wake up call to me. I have a beautiful life and have always lived it to the fullest in every way I could. I have been reminded a few times that I am not invincible but this was a slap-in-the-face reminder that life can be short. I looked at my phone and saw that my screen time was about 3 hours a day and decided that was insane. That means, in just 7 days, I was spending almost an ENTIRE DAY using my phone. I didn’t want to do that anymore. I wanted to do the hard work - Fight to salvage my clarity - And go back to being the person I loved being before all of this technology.
Because I really like who I was before all of this complexity in life. I used to get in my car and literally drive until I ran out of gas and had no money left. I would spend weeks in beautiful parks with no agenda, would camp on beaches in Mexico with no rush, would immerse myself in towns and fall in love with communities of people that would let me dance in their shoes for a minute. I would listen to my favorite songs with my sunroof open, under the blinding bright Milky Way, and drive through the mountains. No one knew where I was. I had no phone. No laptop. Absolutely nothing mattered other than that one moment I was in there. There was no other part of the world because I had nothing that could steal my attention and take me somewhere else.
While I am sure I had moments, I don’t remember ever having trouble sleeping. I don’t remember moments of depression, where I felt like I wasn’t doing enough or felt like I had to be somewhere else. I
So, I will continue to write to share some of the things that led me to this point now. But again, this is a personal decision and something I have wanted to do for quite some time. And I really do hope to inspire others to reevaluate their routines and the ‘insanely busy’ lifestyle so many people force themselves into these days. I hope to inspire people to step back for long enough to remember where they’re heading - And make sure that’s where they want to be. I hope I inspire just one person to write a little bit more, draw a little more intimately, have a longer conversation with no rushing at all and just dream a little bit bigger than technology allows us to.
I hope to show you all just what you can do if you fight to save the precious time we all have available to us. That every minute we can save really does matter. That clarity really is crucial towards a balanced life. That imagination is one of the purest ways we can all step back from the real world and make every day feel like it’s just a dream.
Love you all.
