Work Notes  

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Dear Reader,

The Practice of Attention comes out in five days, a book I outlined in 2021, finished the first draft last February, and edited throughout the Spring and Summer of 2025.

The process of editing the book led me to an irreversible decision, which was to delete my two Instagram accounts - @personapractice (a series of over 900 dance videos) and my personal/creative business account @codycookparrott (the same account that was originally @havecompany)

In many ways this felt like one of the most freeing gifts I’ve ever given myself. But as time has moved on and I’e been interviewed countless times about the book, a new and hidden truth has emerged.

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The story of the book is true, and when I wrote it is was true, but how do we know if we want something to stay true forever? This is the thing about publishing a book, you work on it so far in advance that it can be hard to keep up with the everchanging ways of our internal experiences. We are always allowed to chang our minds, but what happens when we want to change our minds about something the world hasn’t even had a chance to read yet?

I feel like for weeks I’ve been hinting at and scurrying around this hidden truth — one that is two fold. The first being that I really wish I had never deleted my accounts. That as a minimum I had left them up as archives, even if the truth remained that I didn’t want to return.

The other hidden truth is that, I sort of want to go back! Not because I am still addicted and want to drink the kool-aid. But because, the book worked. In many ways the book showed me how to fill my life up in a way that gies me less anxiety and less burnout, and I am so curious what it would be like to return with all new boundaries.

Notice I said boundaries, not rules. Making rules for myself is what drove me crazy. Only letting myself post or check it certain times a day, feeling the extreme pressure to post about current events even when I didn’t feel ready, all the energies about the app that led me to not wanting to use it that were completely outside of the addictive nature.

I couldn’t separate myself from the outside opinions of how I should use my own social media account in the way I feel I can now.

While addiction is one element of why I left social media, I now see clearly it wasn’t really the whole story, and the whole story didn’t make it in the book. I don’t think it could have, I think I needed to live my life without Instagram for long enough to know what it was I was missing, what it was I loved about it (you heard me, LOVED! Pilates videos! Art! New baggu bags!)

So the question I share today is : What would it mean to make an account again? To return with completely different BOUNDARIES. To let myself have fun on it like I used to. To not take it so seriously. These are the questions I am asking.

I started working on a new zine I want to self publish in the coming months that is about NOT TALKING ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA ANYMORE. I think the book is my retirement from writing about social media addiction, how to live with or without it, etc.

I am finding that it is a distraction from my actual work - of dancing, teaching creative business, writing, quilting, and Pilates. It feels like another thing I accidentally turned into my job. Talking about the things, rather than just doing the things.

Don’t get me wrong I am so glad some people dedicate their lives to talking about it. For instance you can listen to me on the latest episode of Off the Grid with Amelia Hruby.

Alas, I am sensing it is no longer my job to be writing about this topic. It reminds me of my sobriety, I don’t spend much of my life writing in detail about it. I choose not to write books about it or go deep other than around my sobriety date. I like that it isn’t part of my job.

My book comes out in five days, and when it was almost time to send it to the printer it specifically stated I take BREAKS from social media. But when reading my own book inspired me to hit delete, I changed the book to say I didn’t use it.

Listen I know I sound like someone with five planets in Gemini, and it’s not even the back and forth of wanting to be on social media as much as it is what I am learning about myself, my own capacity, and missing a broader connection to the people.

Stay tuned, I look forward to writing more about this in the zine I am working on. I don’t have it all worked out. I don’t exactly think it makes sense to have an Instagram account while promoting the book, that was part of the experiment anyways.

But! I’m thinking about it. I am also thinking about how even five minutes a day can completely fracture our attention. War, genocide, a new online class, kids under the rubble, a shiny phone case, celebrities, all in the span of SECONDS.

I want there to be a second internet, maybe starting over was the way all along and I just had to find it.

I’d love to JUICE UP the comments section of this newsletter. Click on leave a comment and tell me what you think, about your own experience or your experience witnessing mine. I’m an open book - also welcoming questions.

I hope you have a beautiful day and stay true to yourself and feel open to changing your mind, even if you put it in a book.

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