Seriously. Haven’t we had enough?
Have you ever turned off your Wi-Fi and your cell phone for an entire hour? Maybe more.
It’s blissful.
It’s freeing. Like walking out of jail after several years. You look around. The walls. The outside through the window. Books on the shelf. And suddenly it all feels like a brand-new experience of life.
It’s glorious.
They call it a digital detox. Clearly an appropriate term, because we’re all strung out on our digital gadgets. It’s an actual addiction. Like iPhone heroin.
Have you ever experienced the trauma of leaving the house without your phone? It’s terrifying. You feel vulnerable and, literally, in danger. How in the world could I possibly exist without checking social media for an hour? Surely it’s life-threatening. I must be. It feels like it is.
Even as I sit here formulating this essay, I want to write it by hand. Desperately want to. On paper. With a pencil. But I just can’t bring myself to do it. I need a fix.
I sit staring at my phone – powered-down on the coffee table. I’m drinking a morning cup of coffee. Needing to write. Wanting to write by hand.
But the craving is too strong.
You see, I have these thoughts, thoughts running through my head. Thoughts I feel must be gotten down right away.
I try to put pencil to paper. But, I can’t.
I power up my iPhone 16 rig so that I can dictate this essay into my digital veins. I need technology.
The methadone of pencil and paper just isn’t the same. It’s not the same high. It’s not the same satisfaction. It all feels too slow somehow. Like my thoughts are so fast now that I can only capture them with technology. If I have to sit and write them out – longhand – I might forget something important before it ever comes to life on paper.
In this fast world of immediate gratification, even my thoughts demand immediacy. I have to post. I have to comment. I have to like. Nothing is slow anymore. I can no longer just sit with my thoughts and let them marinate into a well-constructed idea. And once they are, write them out by hand.
You know. The way Hemingway did it. Sitting in a café or a stark apartment. Writing stories in a notebook or tapping them out on a manual typewriter. Am I even able to think that way anymore? I used to. Before I had the digital monkey on my back.
I want to get clean. I need to get clean. I so desperately want to do the detox. I want to live an entire non-digital day.
Dare I? Can I find the strength of will? The courage?
I know I’m going to do it one day.
Maybe you’ll join me.
Cheers, friends. Let’s keep discovering together.