Disconnect — Suzey Ingold

NB: As I write this, Ukraine is under attack from Russian forces. Global Citizen has published a fantastic list of resources on how to help, financially or otherwise, which is constantly being updated. You can find it here.

I can’t remember the last time I went an entire day without looking at my phone.

It used to be that my summers were spent lakeside, at the cottage in Finland, so far removed from the dialled-in world that my phone would sit, turned off and gathering dust in a drawer for two weeks – maybe more. But somewhere between festival season and travel advisories, the cottage has no longer become my annual retreat. And with its loss, came the loss of my annual ‘no phone zone’.

It’s reflexive, almost. All I have to do is tap the screen for it to light up, to show what I’ve missed in the thirty seconds since I last did it (usually, nothing). Sometimes, I turn my phone over so as to be less inclined to check it. I find myself tapping the back of it, confused when the silicon case does not immediately illuminate to my touch.

Back in the days when I worked in an office, my phone would often go forgotten in my pocket for stretches of time – not least when I was working in the photography lab and I hadn’t a spare hand left and no desire to interrupt the flow I had going. But with working from home, and great stretches of time spent alone in my apartment, my phone became the only source of contact I had with those around me.

And yet, after a day of messaging back and forth with friends, family, and co-workers, I didn’t have the feeling of having had a large amount of social contact. If anything, I felt even more isolated than I did before. Because it’s not really social contact, at all – it’s a box, connecting us to other people’s boxes.

I increasingly found myself moving away from tapping out a lengthy message. I have several friends who refer to my lengthy voice notes as podcast episodes (affectionately, I hope). I call, when I can, even if it’s only for five minutes. Otherwise, I don’t message at all. Because the feeling I get after hanging up a short phone call is so much more to me than the feeling I get when I read a series of messages.

But whether it’s calls or messages, the result is the same: my phone is never far from my hand. Some nights, I try to find some discipline, leaving my phone face down in my bedroom and closing the door. Too far to touch. Too far, even, to hear if it were to ring (I can’t remember the last time I actually had an audible message notification – my phone does not come off Do Not Disturb, ever). Sometimes, I even turn it off. Although, not that often.

I forget about it, eventually. I don’t reach for it. But when I come back to it and find messages waiting for me, I feel guilty. Guilty that I didn’t read them the moment they came in; guilty that I didn’t respond promptly. Even if it’s a Sunday night and it’s a work email that absolutely can – and should – wait until Monday morning. But it’s so engrained now: this sense of obligation to be available every minute of the waking day to anyone with your contact details.

Part of it comes from a place of anxiety. If something happens back home, a couple of timezones and several thousand miles away, the way I’m going to find out is through my phone. The idea that I might be late to receive such news because I wasn’t available fills me with dread. What if I needed to get on a plane that night to be home to see an ailing family member? What if I missed my chance because I didn’t hear it ring?

This conflict isn’t an easy one to solve. Not least when the benefits of our ease of communication likely do outweigh these pressures. To think of how much harder the last two years would have been had we not so easily been able to keep in touch across the globe. To think of how difficult it already is, even with all our technology, for families with loved ones in Ukraine right now to hear from them.

But there was one, larger issue with the device hanging from my hand: my relationship with social media. Within five minutes of waking up, I would be on Twitter, scrolling through a wealth of writing achievements. Agent announcements. Book deals. When I finally got up and turned on my laptop to start writing, my head was already filled up with everything I’d consumed. My mind was jammed with feelings of inadequacy, of imposter syndrome, of not being enough – and that was the headspace I was carrying into trying to write.

I felt my mood lower every time I opened it. Every few posts sending me further and further into a dark hole of, what’s the point? If I stopped to hard to think about what the point of writing is, I would probably never have the strength to put down another word again.

So, I deleted Twitter. One click and it was gone – good riddance to the ten year old tweets about nothing and the wealth of retweets about things I surely didn’t care about anymore. I thought I might miss it. I thought I might itch for it. I didn’t. Instead, I felt calm. I felt at peace. I opened up my book and started to write.

That was about two months ago. Since then, I’ve rewritten my entire book and cut a third off my screenplay draft. I still would have gotten those things done if I’d had Twitter but I would have done with it a whole lot more negative backtalk going on in my head while it was happening.

Oh, the writing I will do when I just delete Twitter.

I returned to Twitter this week. Partially, because sometimes it’s just cathartic to rattle off a couple of hundred characters about whatever. Partially, because it’s how I keep up to date on what my brother’s doing. Partially, because I think it still is a necessary evil of trying to build a writing career. And partially, because I know my mum uses it as a way to see what I’m doing when she hasn’t heard from me in a while (she was the first – and for a while, the only – person to notice I’d left in the first place).

This time around, I’m doing things differently. Clean slate. I’m being pretty liberal with that mute button. I’m not worrying about what I post or how it does; it’s just there if I feel like it or if I have five minutes to waste in my day. I’m done taking it too seriously. I’m done letting it affect my work or my creativity.

Learning to disconnect is not easy but I feel the benefits it’s been having in my life. This year so far has been a lot of reset along with my disconnect. Both are working towards this new chapter of my life that it feels like I’m on the cusp of – but more on that next time.