To step into the stream of any social network, to become immersed in the news, reactions, rage and hopes, the marketing and psyops, the funny jokes and clever memes, the earnest requests for mutual aid, for sign ups, for jobs, the clap backs and the call outs, the warnings and invitations—it can feel like a kind of madness. It’s unsettling, in the way that sediment is unsettled by water, lifted up and tossed around, scattered about. A pebble goes wherever the river sends it, worn down and smoothed day after day until all that’s left is sand.

At some point I became acutely aware of a sense of scattering or separation whenever I glanced at the socials. As if some part of me, or some pattern or vision that I cupped tenderly in my hands, was washed away, wrenched from my grasp before I quite realized what it was.

This brilliant post is essentially four narratives weaved into one.

We are still reeling as a society from the impact of the internet. Being able to summon and mobilize our collective attention is not something we evolved to be able to handle.

My generation is the last one who remembers a time before it, but even that memory is slipping away amongst the daily grind of paying attention to the internet.

The early days of the internet felt a little easier to understand. It wasn’t like everybody was on it in the late nineties; in fact, it was usually the dorks and nerds that were on it.

Any community could be represented so long as there was someone nerdy enough to set up a message board and dorky enough to pay for the hosting costs.

And those early days felt like an escape. It didn’t feel like the internet dominated my mind the way it does today.

Today, though, is completely different. The internet doesn’t offer the same sort of escape that it used to. Now, it feels like a compulsion. Something I wish I could stop but can’t easily without resorting to drastic measures like ditching my iPhone.

And so I remain at an unresolvable juncture: the intersection of the very strong belief that we must experiment with new modes and systems of communication, and the certain knowledge that every time I so much as glance at anything shaped like a social feed, my brain smoothes out, the web of connections and ideas I’m weaving is washed away, and I tumble downstream, only to have to pick myself up and trudge heavily through the mud back to where I belong.

It’s exhausting. It is, at this point in my life, unsustainable. I cannot dip into the stream, even briefly, and also maintain the awareness and focus needed to do my own work, the work that is uniquely mine. I cannot wade through the water and still protect this fragile thing in my hands. And perhaps I owe to my continued senescence the knowledge that I do not have time for this anymore.

This is the same conclusion I came to after I did, in fact, ditch my iPhone this summer.¹

I find myself pulling my phone out at night and just sort of staring at it.

Whatever world I’d been building in my mind to that point is completely washed away.

And more often than not, I find myself jumping into the water feet first dozens of times a day, hoping to find meaning, instead emerging each time covered with a viscous layer of grime that leaves me feeling guilty and ashamed.

This realization is possibly one of my most important ones to come out of this sincerely horrifying year.

All of those sleepless nights where my anxiety-raddled brain conjured up infinite scenarios in a vain attempt to derive meaning in a place where none can be found.

It’s time to get out of the water for a while.