A month without writing

What (kinda) staying off devices felt like

Before the summer break started, I thought I had it set — I’d be making a transition to a better job, and I had a few weeks off, which I’d use to finish off the novel, travel, and spend time with my kid and the family.

Then I had some extremely unexpected stress that triggered a whole bunch of other issues some of which scared me quite a bit. I went off of all the apps for a short while, because the pathological scrolling that I’d developed to deal with stress was making everything worse.

After just not doing anything for two weeks other than listening to audiobooks about and by comedians, I figured out the solution — I needed to limit how sedentary I was. The longer I sat down, the worse I felt. I’m not sure standing desks really change things.

Some amount of sedentary was non-negotiable, because of the nature of my work. But any chance I got, I have to be on my feet. I’ve to be out in the sun. I’ve to be out talking to people. All the things everyone says are good for you, but this time for real.

Which meant — I couldn’t write. I couldn’t even entertain the possibility of writing. No more sitting at my computer for hours, trying to figure out what word comes next. And definitely no editing! It took HOURS to get even the most basic editing done, and it had no end.

So, I’ve been not-writing for a little over a month. I’ve done the Monday Cup Of Links posts, but something’s gotten in the way of even that the past couple of weeks. I haven’t read through all the stories you guys sent over for the Prompta Prize. And I haven’t been able to do the final edit of my novel.

I’m figuring out how to write more, and sustainably. But while I do that, I’ve had a bunch of thoughts on all of this:

• I had really misunderstood what ‘rest’ means. I guess I’d never really seen anyone around me really rest for real. Everyone around me is always working, and the only ‘rest’ they take is to sit down and talk with friends, or take naps. I feel like that’s impossible for me to do unless my friends are my neighbors (and they are all busy too for whatever reason), so I don’t ‘relax’, ever. I do activities considered ‘relaxing’, like watching TV or reading. But my body isn’t actually at rest, even if I’m vegging out. And not putting your body in a state of calm is so bad for you.

• Procrastinating while vegging out is the worst - I think I’m relaxing, but I’m actually not. Procrastinating is really bad for health.

• Yoga is actually a superior form of exercise compared to literally everything else. Like, I’m not saying Yoga will develop muscles for you, but it seems to focus a lot on flexing your body, and then actually calming it down. I feel like most types of exercise, at least as commonly understood, don’t focus on calming your body down after. And there seems to be a lot of benefits that come from just the recovery. The breathing parts of the asanas seem key to this.

• All the discourse about protein, fat, carbs, exercise improving your mental health, salt, sugar, acid, fat….. all of that seems like such garbage when the rubber hits the road.

• There’s been so much happening in India, and I only check social media for a few minutes a day. This way, the only thing I get about the CJP protests are the memes. And, that seems sufficient. I don’t think there’s anything to be gained from following news in real time in detail. Literally just read the newspaper the next day to get news devoid of rumors and speculation.

• Most people posting on any topic are not actually well-versed in what’s going on. If you try looking at your feed through the lens of ‘what new information am I getting from this post?’, you’ll quickly realize you’re not getting much. Previously when I’d see someone posting ‘Gen Z is done for’ or ‘The TFR is shot forever’, I used to have a small mental reaction to these. But not going on social media much makes you realize these people don’t have access to any info you’re not privy to, and you can safely ignore all these takes.

• Not all books are great. Most are garbage. But a book is like a complete thought, at the very least. Or following an idea to its logical conclusion to the author’s best ability. In comparison, internet posting feels very shoot-and-scoot. And we need to be able to sustain our attention enough to listen to a complete thought, or to follow an idea to its logical conclusion. The solution is better books, but discovery seems like a hard problem in this market of plenty.

• My interest in history can just be GONE if I spend time on other stuff. It still persists as a niggling feeling of curiosity, but without access to feeds that give me an idea of all the cool things happening in history or great people digging up stories from obscure books, that curiosity has very little to hang on to.

• Life is SO MUCH better if I’m not writing day-to-day, and SO MUCH WORSE long-term. I didn’t realize how much of my life centered around writing. I now have enough time to learn quilting, or take up day-long hikes, or reorganize my kitchen. Which are all nice, but I just feel like my head is full of incomplete thoughts now and I really need to write. Journaling doesn’t cut it enough. I need to sit down with my thoughts and organize them and tell a story, otherwise I don’t feel quite right.

I guess I feel the need to justify my continued focus on writing even if life’s so much better if I’m doing literally anything else. I suppose any normal person hearing about how hard it is for me to make time to write would say “Then don’t write, no one’s asking you to”. And it’s true, no one’s asking me to. I’m just inflicting my writing on all of you. And I actually did stop writing and everything in my life got better in every way.

So why would I go back to this? I don’t actually care about fame, and at its best, I doubt I’ll be getting paid a whole lot to write. I wish I could say stuff like “there are stories in me dying to get out”. Like, there are, but sometimes they’ll just stay happily in there as I walk through a forest of coast redwoods and sew clothes for my kid’s dolls.

I guess the only thing is I sometimes feel like I’m suppressing this part of myself, like when I don’t make an appointment to go to the Ghadar museum in San Francisco or avoid a trip to Angel Island because I know I’m going to come back from that and write for days.

And that feels big enough that I need to make more time to write anyway.