Swimming gives me the answers

Today I want to talk about the serious and drastic measures I’ve taken this week to reclaim my attention and the huge signs the universe gave me that I am right on track. I began before I was ready, I began before I knew what was next. There was no way to see what was next without leaving what wasn’t working.

It is no mystery I struggle with phone addiction. I’ve been openly writing about it and talking about it since 2018. This week I made a decision to hand my Instagram password over to my virtual assistant Hannah so that I no longer have access to my own social media. We have done this before, but this time it feels different. It has felt different before too. But this time it feels like life or death of the spirit and soul.

This is about swimming and about drowning and about attempting to float. This is about diving in after a long walk and knowing it might be a little cold but your whole body will feel more alive than it ever has. This is about how we wait seven months to feel the best feeling on Earth. I looked at Mo after we swam last week and I said - My favorite thing to do in the whole world is swim in Lake Michigan. There is nothing I like more.

I think that taking breaks from social media and tech addiction using our own willpower is almost impossible. I can only speak for myself but my texts are filled with countless artists desperately seeking the air to fill their lungs with creative magic, rather than the endless despair of consumption on the apps. But they can’t stop, and talking about it is incredibly uncool. Especially with the broken record echos.

I am not just talking about consumption but about access. The extreme accessibility to our time, attention, and resources that anyone can ask for or request at anytime. We then must summon up a great power within ourselves not to open every DM or click every reel that is recommended to us. Can we do this with our own human power, do we ask god for help, or do we hire someone else to run social media? And if that is out of our budget, do we leave all together? And if leaving all together isn’t in the business plan, is it time we all write new business plans?

The question I ask myself alongside others is - if I am not overly available will I still be relatable? Is my relatability contingent on my accessibility?

I will now fiercely protect my accessibility and separate it from how I am related to. I have had no boundaries on social media, something I have worked to heal as a teacher with my students. It is important for me to give my students the dignity of their experience - they may not like everything I say or suggest as a teacher, but I trust them to respect themselves, me, and the container of the classroom.

On social media I don’t have that same trust with the masses, no exchange for my time and attention. I put on my people pleasing hat and do my best to attend to every person who wants to comment, DM, or speak to me. As my career has grown that has become an absurd attempt, fracturing my attention beyond measure and clouding my thoughts and brain power.

Texts and personal communication goes unread because I am swarmed with my responses to strangers or people I am in parasocial relationships with. I feel compelled to say that I have also loved the connections I have made in the realm of Instagram, not just with people I have become true friends with, but a place to connect with my readers and students outside the classroom.

This space, the newsletter space and space that Substack provides for connection, has nourished my creativity in the ways that Instagram once did. I don’t feel drained responding to comments from paid subscribers, I feel generous with my time, and I do not feel a pressure internally or externally to engage.

So, if Instagram becomes simply a bulletin board, will it still work? Will my magic glowing self still shine through? If anything I wonder if my offerings will be what actually begin to shine brighter, because my attention is fully present. The real question is - is it even working as it was?

Stealing the attention of the deep work of my writing, teaching, and art making doesn’t seem like something that is working. The algorithm shows only a selfie every three months to the followers, that isn’t something that is working. My fear may lie more in, am I willing to give up the false sense of feeling connected and needed? Am I willing to give up the dopamine hits? Am I willing to turn over my codependent relationship with a digital realm and the relationships that live inside of it?

I am willing, I am humbly asking my chaotic version of god to restore my alignment to my value of presence. In the past Hannah and I have created systems in Notion for communicating what DM’s are coming in or comments that need to be responded to. I don’t currently have any interest in ever opening a DM again or reading a comment so as of now we haven’t built new systems. I will use it for its function of telling the people about the things. I will not use it as a place to answer questions, connect, or respond to bids for my attention.

When it all feels too much, I go to the water. I submerge my body over and over again. I watch June swim to me as if she is going to save me in case something happens, her joy beaming through every ripple of the water. I love to swim because I don’t bring my phone into the water. My phone stays on the shore and my body goes in. Walking and morning pages give me my self, swimming gives me the answers. My higher power saves the best mysteries for under the waves. I have to dive all the way in to hear them.

I understand having someone else run your social media is not an option for most, but I want to share it in hopes of dreaming up new boundaries of interaction. You don’t have to ever look at a DM again, ever. You really don’t. There are no rules that say you have to. I want to believe in a world of business and artistry where that is not part of a business plan.

I found that as I didn’t have access to my Instagram my interest in sharpening my website and offering came into clearer focus. I opened up my books for creative advising, saw opportunities for new classes, and started organizing plans for a new website. My ecosystem is so much more than an algorithmic grid.

After I logged out I got an email from my literary agent two minutes later. Two minutes. An enthusiastic response to my latest draft of my next book proposal. A book about attention. A book I have been trying to get to make sense for two years.

I had to leave to come back to myself. I had to leave and not know what was next. I have found my fingers looking for other distractions in my phone, but for the most part I find my focus and self returning even just after three days. I find that at the end of writing this I feel crazy having even had to write it. And yet, I know that I am not the only one struggling with the many addictive sides of social media.

Leaving all together still feels like the holiest option. My dreams of continued authorship of physical books stops me from hitting the delete forever button. And then again I think, a new business plan may be in order.

Trust, we must trust, not to spiritually bypass ourselves or our income potential or the ways social media works. But to trust that it be taking up more space in your life than you even know, and doing a thorough inventory around its use may be of great benefit.

I am sending well wishes, I look forward to beginning The Artist’s Way book study next week. Details will come to you on Friday June 16. You are magic! May we tend to our creative spirits forever and ever.

A portion of June’s paid subscriptions go towards the Grand Rapids Pride Center

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The Art of Beginning is available to purchase and comes with a Notion template, project database, and room to write in your own answers for the class. If you’re feeling the urge to distance yourself from social media, the class supports you in designing accountability projects to do with your email list. It is a really fun class with exercises to apply to hobbies, personal practices, business, and art

THE ART OF BEGINNING