Thunder dominates the soundscape in the desert, signaling the start of monsoon season along with the herbaceous scent of wet sage lingering in the air. Some areas of the desert already experienced powerful floods. Summer torrents like these flush river channels, canyons, and drainages of built-up debris––mud flats, stagnant pools, fallen branches, and algae.
While the rain near me has only sputtered, it is no less cleansing. Most days, I find time to go out and experience the storms mindfully. Watching thunderheads build from a safe distance. Listening to the sound of rushing water while safely perched on a canyon rim. Writing with the windows open so the wind can blow through my thoughts. In the evening, I sit outside and let the refreshing drops slip down my warm skin.
Writer’s block has plagued me as of late. Rather than force myself to write, I turn my time and mind to the stormy skies. Space to breathe, think, feel, and just be is part of writing too. The interesting thing is that once I am out, I eventually pull out my notebook and pencil.
Refreshed and inspired, I return to my computer eager to repeat the experience and come up blank once more. It occurred to me that my block was not about writing at all––it was about the technology seemingly required to write––my laptop, phone, and social media apps––and the associated stress. The laptop is perhaps the easiest to address, as I open, shut, and walk away from it as I please. It also helps me record long-form stories and books, which are my passion to write. Only when I am on deadline do I feel a sense of commitment or obligation to be chained to my laptop.
But the phone is trickier. It’s the portal to email, social media, texting friends, calling family, looking at maps, listening to music, and taking photos. The do-it-all-device makes it challenging to take breaks from any of this. I turn off my notifications and all sounds. When I hike, the phone is in airplane mode. I set boundaries with my social media use, like checking in occasionally as I do my email and rarely spending time scrolling. Still, elements of my work take place on social media, which increasingly makes it difficult to create boundaries between the space of social media and my personal life. A phone and social apps also make me available to be contacted by others (including complete strangers) more than I desire, find helpful, or feel comfortable with.
By now you have heard the Surgeon General’s recommendations for warning labels on social apps, because of the effect on youth mental health. And if it’s not healthy for children, it’s worth considering how it affects adult health as well, along with other substances that have warning labels, and bans for children, like cigarettes and alcohol. I highly recommend listening to this Washington Post podcast interview with Surgeon General Vivek Murthy about this.
This prompted some more rainy day think sessions. How indispensable are these devices to our writing, and to our lives at all? Rather than attempt to answer that question here, I offer it to you for consideration as well. I have many thoughts about this, and I plan to sit with them and continue thinking. Which is a direct counter to the instant and often reactionary atmosphere social media and smartphones create.
Once you have chosen to use the app, the growth and viewers of what you share are largely out of your control. You are potentially subjecting yourself to anything anyone in the world wants to say about you––be it kind, malicious, irrelevant, or lost in translation. The tools to mitigate this invasion of communication include privacy settings or intense moderation of activity. Both of which have varying effectiveness. You are still using an app that bombards you with information and images by design.
Having a relatively large social media audience is often conflated with actually enjoying the use of the platforms or even having the audience. My enjoyment is akin to answering a productive email or getting my teeth cleaned at the dentist. Both of these can be positive, but they do not inherently bring me joy (and often bring worse) unlike hiking down a canyon, floating a river, running at full speed, writing a story, or cooking a nice dinner.
After all, I am a writer, which is a craft that inherently requires devoted stretches of alone time. When complete, the book or article is typically edited by an editor working on their own, and then finally published and read by someone else who is also alone. (Cheers to people who still read aloud together.) Though I want and hope for people to read my writing, and cotninue to think about it, I am not interested in being a constant part of their dialogue in response. A story is meant to be shared, to share. Not to receive anything in return.
The storyteller makes no choice
soon you will not here his voice
his job is to shed light
and not to master.––Robert Hunter
After taking stock, I concluded that I am in a good place to take a sabbatical from my social media while keeping some distance from my phone. And no, I am not taking a vacation from work or writing. Quite the opposite. There are creative pursuits, relationships, and personal experiences I want to focus on without these so-called tools. When I think about it, most of the tasks we perceive to require a phone are still possible without them.
I have several notebooks, pens, pencils, watercolors, a digital camera, and the latest print issue of The Atlantic packed in a backpack. Nothing revolutionary here, just some creative tools that are not tethered with any pressure to share with the world. No one can like my photo through the camera, nor comment or message me about anything I wrote. The book I am reading cannot send me a targeted ad. I have a collection of cards to pen and mail letters to loved ones when the human urge to share strikes. How long will I go on like this? True expeditions unfold along the way, so I cannot say how long the distance will be for this journey.
In this era, there is immense pressure for artists of all mediums to “share content” and “grow your audience,” and to have your foot constantly on this peddle. This is not all inherently negative, but the pressure and effort to do this might be. So too, the belief that it is mandatory. That artists are irrelevant or invisible without social media.
Authors are taxed with hyping up pre-sales before a book is even released. If we do not do this well, we are cautioned the book might flop. Artists and writers are tasked with not only creating art, but also reproducing it, reformating it, explaining it, and reexamining it with different platforms and audiences constantly. Artists must navigate social media using mediums we are not devotees of which robs us of time working on what we care about. And then, we must hope that all of the likes and hearts gathered translate into somebody purchasing and appreciating the work of art or book we devoted our creativity to.
So where do we go from here? I plan to continue writing and sharing on Substack 1-4 times a month. The range is a display of commitment to you, my subscribers, but also a promise that I will never flood your inbox with crap. When I write to you, it will be from my heart.
I enjoy this space to develop my thoughts in a writing-friendly platform rather than a minuscule photo box. The comments are off and will continue to be closed. It is a large time commitment that distracts from my writing and real-life presence.
Substack is the closest social platform to the format of old-school magazines. Once upon a time, and even today, people read articles (or books) and then, if so inclined, continued to give them some thought. Perhaps they picked it up for a second read. Sometimes it resonated differently depending on the day or moment in one’s life. If they reacted to the piece they did so with space for processing and reflection, and without instant immediate access to the author. I like the old-time idea of accepting handwritten letters sent to a P.O. Box…someday.
To open her essay “Goodbye to All That,” Joan Didion wrote: “It’s easy to see the beginning of things, and harder to see the ends.” I don’t see an end here, this feels confidently like a beginning.
🧡
End Notes:
For those of you who drink coffee, the kind and generous folks behind Traveling Gnome Coffee are allowing me to share 20% off your orders when you use the code Mo20. I will share more about the environmentally sustainable vision behind their coffee soon. Their beans are delicious, the fun artwork is designed by their daughter, and they are devoted to supporting the trans community through their coffee.
I do get a kickback from sales, which helps me myself, along with paid Substack subscriptions. These are the realities of freelancing in 2024.
But how will you know if people are really reading your book if you are not on social media? This helps!