new year same me
*Law and Order voice* Previously, on Touch Grass:
I’m a digital product designer in tech, trying to quit my tech addiction. I structured this experiment as an elimination diet: cut out my smartphone, social media, and streaming services, then re-introduce inputs one by one to understand their effects. When we last left off, on the first night of this experiment, I was convinced it was the best decision I had ever made.
—
It’s been over a month since I stopped using my smartphone. The first seventeen days coincided with my winter vacation. Nonstop rain and the latest Covid wave kept me at home, so I started reading seven books, finished four, reread one, and bought twelve more. I used up all the blank pages in my journal, then got a new notebook and filled up half of that too. I read every single email newsletter that came through my inbox, wrote two newsletters of my own, and had fifteen email conversations with friends, which adds up to more emailing in seventeen days than in the last two years combined. I say this not to boast of my productivity, but to show the breadth of my boredom; I simply had nothing else to do.
In my search for stimulation, I decided to start a company, get plastic surgery, move to a foreign country, have a baby, shave my head, form an essay club, find God, take an ungodly amount of drugs, and write a book. The last idea was the only one that stuck. It first crossed my mind shortly after midnight on New Year’s Day, despite my firm resolution to not have any New Year’s resolutions because I knew better than to set myself up for failure and disappointment. I had been googling “writer’s writers” while thinking about designer’s designers, pouting in mild disappointment that I would never be either. Maybe, I consoled myself, I could become a designer’s writer. After all, I had never found a book on my profession that I actually wanted to read. Maybe I could write it myself.
The idea seemed just new enough to be challenging, just familiar enough to be attainable. Never mind that I had no specific idea what The Book I Want to Read would be about, or that my past track record in writing consisted of maybe one essay a year. Buoyed by the energy of my smartphone-free holiday, I was convinced that this time would be different. In the time since I last reached for a goal (getting my first design job seven years ago), digital distractions had drugged me into complacency, but my new lifestyle offered me a real chance to do something big. I clung to this new spark of ambition, desperate to keep it alive after seven years of being adrift.
Upon returning to work in the new year, I reshuffled my daily schedule to harness the best of my creative energy and attention for The Book: I’d wake up at dawn to write for a few hours, log on to my corporate tech job until dusk, then read until bedtime. Nevertheless, my mind dulled with each passing day. Every workday drained me more than a single night’s rest could recharge. In my first week back, I developed a tension headache that lingered for four days, evading new pillow arrangements and neck stretches. Hot and itchy patches of familiar eczema bloomed in new areas of my face. I stopped emailing my friends. My attempts to read or write anything always slipped back into mental sinkholes of anxiety about my headache, or plans for my projects at work. I wondered if my rediscovered drive was just the passing self-delusion of another new year, same me.
Six long weeks ago, I’d have turned to scrolling to distract myself from the discomfort of these doubts. The workday makes me perfectly fatigued enough to be a consumer of content, too mentally exhausted to reach for more nourishing activities or more ambitious goals. Perhaps it is employment, and not smartphone usage, that has dulled my motivation since entering the workforce. I keep thinking of a 2010 post by blogger David Cain, on how the 40-hour workweek traps workers into consumerism:
“Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television, and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work.
“We’ve been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convenience and entertainment, and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lives so that we continue wanting things we don’t have. We buy so much because it always seems like something is still missing.”
Twelve years later, the same holds true; just replace “buy” with “scroll.” No wonder people use social media more on weekdays, looking for an easy escape from their obligations. In my own mental landscape, knowledge work and tech addiction are perfect complements, each colonizing mindshare until reaching the other's boundary.
Without a steady stream of content to anesthetize me, a more sinister boredom looms. My brain now has just enough stray energy after work to ruminate over the few events of my small, quiet life. I escalated my indecision over joining a group trip into a character judgment on whether or not I am a coward. I let anxiety about asking for feedback curdle into such discomfort that I had to curl up in fetal position for a day and whimper in emotionally-constipated distress. My repetitive thoughts clatter around like marbles every night as I try to fall asleep; to quiet the noise, I have to visualize placing each thought-marble in a glass cookie jar, then closing the lid with the satisfying pop of a snug fit. I hold my concentration as long as possible to keep this imaginary jar shut. Then I inevitably lose concentration, the jar evaporates, and all the marbles would start clacking together again. I wish I could lose my marbles, for I have too many of them, and they are all so loud.
The thought-marbles keep me up late. I wake up at eight o’clock and go straight to work. I don’t write anything for The Book, or even for my journal. I move my body to avoid my brain; it’s harder to spiral when you’re lifting weights.
—
Thanks to the friends who took the time to give feedback on an earlier draft: Barron, Carrie, David, Erica, Jodi+Josh. I'm sure you had thoughtful notes, but unfortunately I did not even read them because it would have short-circuited my brain. I made Jodi read them and summarize for me instead.