When I was a kid, tossing and turning in my bed after my parents kissed us goodnight and switched off the light, I’d listen closely to the night sounds, the sounds of my parents puttering around the house after the children were “asleep.” The clatter of pots and pans as the kitchen was restored to its “vital glory” (borrowed from my friends at The Hostel in the Forest). The pitter-patter of water raining down on the plants as my mother cared for the bougainvillea and birds of paradise in the front yard. The whisper of leather as my father laid himself down on the couch with a book or magazine.
My favorite sound was the squeak from the faucet in the bathroom, which meant that my mother was close by. After the squeak came the rush of water filling the bathtub, the sound dulling as the water rose higher and higher in the tub. Finally, another squeak as the faucet was turned off, which I always imagined that my mother did with her toe as she laid in the warm bath, but I have no way to know. Now as an adult, I have a better understanding of what was happening here. This was my mother’s wind-down ritual, after a long day of traffic, school drop-offs, depositions, deadlines, dinner…
In order to reflect on my own wind-down ritual, let me share a quote from
‘s newsletter, :Evening starts when you’re done all your tasks for the day. It’s that lull in-between dinner and sleep; too tired for anything productive, too wired for sleep so you fill it with the internet. Scroll, scroll, scroll. Because you’re scrolling, because of the blue light, rage, and information overload, you are even more wired. Sleep alludes you. You scroll more. It’s a never-ending cycle. Night after night, day after day. You know what to do, why don’t you do it?
Why do you give yourself up so easily?
Why don’t you just stop scrolling?
Why are you wasting your time staring into a black mirror? Tapping at a void— endless, empty. What do you get out of it? After all the hours you spent staring into the void— days, nights, weeks, months— what do you have to show for it? Tell me.
My evenings have felt like the last frontier when it comes to my digital addiction. When I still had my smartphone, my goal was to power it off in the evenings, so I wasn’t tempted to waste hours scrolling and falling down rabbit holes, only to reemerge hours later, confused and full of shame. Now I don’t have a smartphone, but as Mehret writes, “Internet never lets me down. She’s always there, always available, always for free.” And I don’t need a smartphone to access the internet. I simply pop open my laptop and jump into the Great Internet Abyss.
Instead of recovering from my day as a caregiver to two tiny humans, I glue myself to a screen and give away my time and attention.
A few months ago, I purchased a subscription of Freedom, an app that blocks your access to certain distracting websites or apps. You can configure it to do whatever you want – which websites you want to block, for how much time, etc. I’d been turning it on a few mornings a week to have two-hour chunks of time where I could engage in DEEP WORK. That worked pretty well, but I also realized that I didn’t always have the foresight to start a session before falling into the Great Internet Abyss.
But, I had pinpointed a time during my days when I was particularly susceptible to the pull of the Great Internet Abyss – the time between putting my kids to bed and putting myself to bed. So, I decided to create a recurring session that runs every night between 9 p.m. and midnight.
Friends, I feel like I’ve gotten my life back.
Some nights, I cram as much internet surfing as I can get between the kids’ bedtime (8ish) and 9 p.m. when the Freedom gods release their force upon the mere mortal that I am. But then, I put down my phone or walk away from my laptop and go find something else to do.
Cal Newport writes in his book, Digital Minimalism, that you must be intentional about filling the void that is left by the internet/social media/your smartphone. You can’t expect it to be easy to walk away from something that has been so all-consuming for so long.
What do you do with all your newfound time?
I have been re-reading my journals from the pandemic, when I was pregnant with my first son and then in the dark but also magical months following his birth. I have been shocked by the sheer number of words that I was able to get down on the page—stolen moments after late-night feedings, or during a mid-morning nap. Also, I am moved by the depth of emotion and insight that exists on the page.
Reading these journals has given me pause – I so rarely make time to write for myself anymore. I used to be an avid journal-keeper, usually writing in the evenings, sometimes propped up in bed. But these days, I spend so much of my precious evening downtime standing in my kitchen, messing around on the internet. I am looking to relax and unwind, but I can’t do that if I’m not being intentional about my actions and my energy.
I plate my dinner and I freak out: Eating with company is a natural way of things but no such luxury when you are alone. You can watch TV, of course, but no internet, no scrolling, no noisy avatars. After dinner I surrender. For the first 15 minutes or so it is very uncomfortable; to just be, to not know what the fuck to do without the internet. But if you can manage those few moments without being too harsh on yourself, even perhaps remaining curious instead of judgmental, you slowly began to notice all the things you can do all around you.
I’m a mother of two tiny humans and, I’ll be honest, it’s a struggle. I am finding that every single day has me digging deep into my reserves to find more patience, more self-compassion, more love. What I really need at the end of the day is something truly restorative.
We talk so much about self-care in our culture, but I’ll say it again and again:
SCROLLING IS NOT SELF-CARE.
Self-care, for me, is setting the Freedom app to block the internet at 9 p.m. so that I can work on a craft project while listening to a podcast, or write in my journal, or read a magazine, or write a letter, or call a friend, or putter around my house, or take a walk around the block. Or simply go to bed early. Why not?
I think embedded in this obsession with constant connectivity to the world wide web is an unhealthy obsession with productivity (thank you, capitalism). In an effort to recalibrate my mental health, I am trying to divest myself from productivity, trying to keep my goals as mundane as possible. Feed myself and my family. Take care of my body. Connect with my community. Stay present for the little humans in my care.
Like Mehret implores in their post, why not take the time to notice the things you can do all around you, even if that just means sitting in a chair and looking out the window.
I’ve been lighting candles lately. Blame
, who writes in her book Enchantment about the Scandinavian practice of lighting candles as a part of daily life. I’ve been adopting this ritual in my own life, lighting one of the many candles that I’ve collected over the years (and that have been collecting dust on my shelves) and simply sitting with them. Finding company in their quiet flicker while I sit at the dining room table. The house is quiet. The kitchen is clean. The children’s breath has finally slowed as sleep has overtaken their bustling bodies. This is for me what the squeak of the bathtub faucet was for my mother — a moment to simply be.It’s uncomfortable, I’m not going to lie. It has become so natural to turn to external sources for delight, solace, entertainment, distraction. And yet, with every evening that I pick up an embroidery hoop instead of falling into a digital rabbit hole, I am unlearning something that has engrained itself in my psyche. Unlearning the collapse of my consciousness and returning to a different way of being.
On the web:
Replacing Phone Scrolling With Stitching Is Perhaps Most Subversive Of All
As i mentioned, I have been learning more about embroidery, and I recently bought a kit from Cozy Blue Handmade. While poking around the website, I came across this interview with the creator about her relationship to stitching as a radical act in our digital world.
“You Can’t Have ADHD. You Went to Amherst.”
My recent feature for the Amherst magazine in which I interview alumni who received later-in-life ADHD diagnoses.
I had to block multiple things on my phone after a certain time for the same reason! It's gotten easier to do my journal and stretch and calmly wind down for sleep, but it's definitely a hard/weird transition.