In case I haven’t explicitly said it on the internet yet, I moved back in with my parents last month. I’ll be here for the next six months or so.

I grew up in this house; as a teenager/young adult, I hated my hometown for a lot of the reasons I appreciate it now:

• It takes forever to get anywhere. The closest Trader Joe’s is over an hour and a half away. My Wednesday night tap class requires a three-hour journey to get there and back.

• There aren’t a whole lot of interesting things to do aside from being outside. The local mall has been 75% abandoned for several years, there’s approximately one local coffee shop, and I run the risk of bumping into someone from high school at the movie theater. Fortunately, my parents have an incredible backyard filled with wind chimes, swings, flowers, plants, and birds.
  
  As I write this, I keep glancing at a woodpecker(?) picking at one of the many bird feeders nearby. I am also covered in bug bites.

• Rarely is anything automated or “efficient.” If I want to make a doctor’s appointment, I have to call. If I want to book a Pilates session, I have to text the instructor and we manually find a time to meet. The post office has one very chatty woman who knows everyone, so it’s rarely a quick trip.

Finding silence in a place like this is really easy. To be honest, you kind of have to actively go looking for a lot of noise.

I recently started a study group with Cody Cook-Parrott for their newly-released book, The Practice of Attention. (Side note: I think I can only read books in groups now? lol. What a genius idea!)

It’s week two and we’re entering our digital detox experiment. Last night, I set some ground rules for how I’d like to limit screens and digital consumption this week.

My main focus is to put some constraints around television, podcasts, and Reddit.

I have been slowly removing social media from my life over the last 10 years. It started with deleting Facebook back in 2016. I went through spells of deactivating Instagram and LinkedIn between 2020 and 2023, then fully deleted both over two years ago. It’s been about four months since I deleted TikTok, and less than a month since I switched to Buttondown from Substack.

When we first started talking about detoxing, I thought to myself, Ha! Easy peasy. I’ve already left so many platforms. Consider me Amish.

But when I thought about limiting reality tv, I started freaking out a bit.

Over the years, I’ve replaced the endless scrolling with endless hours of women and gays screaming at each other on Bravo. And then listening to people recap the screaming on their podcasts.

My tv and podcast consumption serves a similar purpose to social media: Filling any potential moment of silence with unnecessary noise, in avoidance of even one millisecond of discomfort or self-reflection.

Now hear me when I say, I will likely never fully give up reality tv. It brings me a lot of joy and relaxation. I’m invested in these insane people, some of whom I’ve been watching for over 10 years.

This detox is less about removing it from my life entirely and more about understanding its purpose; not allowing it to take up too much space in my brain; being more mindful about my consumption of it.

This morning was the first time in a really long time I didn’t immediately reach for my phone when I woke up. And it was uncomfortable as hell. My instinct was to throw on last night’s RHORHI, to escape the discomfort, and it illuminated a tendency I have to pacify or distract from “negative” emotions.

When I first started seeing a therapist for my OCD, one of the things she said that has stuck with me is the importance of embracing short-term discomfort for long-term healing.

This feels very much like that.

I am healing my attention.

MY DIGITAL DETOX RULES:

Well, first, I gave myself a menu of shows I actually look forward to/enjoy throughout the week; these are the only ones I’m allowed to watch during the detox.

I won’t share the full list here, but if you’re curious, I’m happy to send you a list of what made the cut. (Unfortunately, hate watching the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills reunion didn’t sound like a great use of energy in the context of this detox.)

I’m also not allowed to do anything else while I watch. No texting, playing games on my phone, working, or scrolling Reddit. I have to watch it on an actual TV, not my laptop or iPad, because it’ll be too tempting to multitask.

If I find the show isn’t interesting enough to hold my full attention, then I’ll give myself permission to turn it off and do something else — like go for a walk, practice some tap moves, or work on one of my many unfinished craft projects.

I won’t be watching any TV on Wednesday or Saturday of this week. Wednesdays are my tap days, which has me in the car for a good portion of the day. I’m going to try reallllyyyy hard to do at least 30 minutes to an hour in silence while I drive. We’ll see how that goes.

Saturday will be my podcast day while I clean and continue to unpack. I don’t want to listen to anything while I do brain work, so I’ll save those for the physical work instead.

A few other little things I decided to throw into the detox to see how they land:

• Not checking email or texts until 1pm. Florida weather is only really enjoyable before noon, so I’d rather spend the start of my day outside.

• Only checking email and other work channels twice per day, at designated times. This is the most anxiety-inducing for me but I keep reminding myself it’s only five days.

• Deleting Reddit, YouTube, Patreon, and the podcast app from my phone.

WHAT’S THE POINT?

The overall goal here, and the purpose of Cody’s book, is to take back my attention.

I want to give my brain a break. To create more freely. To do better work. To turn off auto-pilot and start making more intentional choices in my day-to-day life.

The purpose of the detox is not to radically decrease my digital consumption overnight; these rules aren’t sustainable for me forever and ever, amen.

But I’m interested to see how things go.

I’ll likely give y’all an update next week to share how it went, what I noticed, and if there’s anything I’m going to try to weave into my daily rituals moving forward.

If you haven’t already checked it out, I truly could not recommend The Practice of Attention more. I’ve been “clean” of the nonfiction, ‘self-help’ genre for many years now and am always skeptical of partaking; but Cody’s approach is so gentle and intentional, it makes something really hard feel so much more accessible (and fun).

Peace, love and sorry Andy Cohen,

Andrea