I’m trying to stop using technology. When I say using, I mean it in an addiction sense. I still of course need to use technology and phones and computers and all that for my job and just my existence as a human being in 2024.
But I’m trying to stop using it.
Escaping with it. You know what I mean.
The scrolling. The bathroom breaks that take 15 minutes. The mornings hijacked by newsfeeds of photos and events that I actually didn’t need to know anything about. The well let me just one more video nights.
A little over a year sober from alcohol, I’ve learned some things during that time about myself and about addiction.
Anyone can use anything to escape. To dissociate themselves from reality. Food, work, drugs, sex, exercise, people, cheese. If you are only classifying addiction as something that is the same as a drug or alcohol then you are kind of fucked in your definition and are probably forfeiting your peace in ways you don’t even realize.
Addiction does not look like how it is portrayed in the movies. And that’s actually a negative. Addiction is portrayed as a complex thing. I feel as though it is simple. In my world, any time I feel myself forming a dependency within my brain on something – that is the building blocks of addiction.
In the same vain, people all too often wait for the bottom to be discovered to take control of their life. Addiction starts small and takes more and more. The reason why it gets bad is because we let it take up the space and territory in our world.
So I’m working on removing more and more addictions from my world. Without, you know, being addicted to even the act of that.
So technology, social media, my phone in general is something I’m working to define parameters and limits with.
I went on vacation two weeks ago. I read 300 pages of a book that I really enjoyed. Since returning I haven’t picked that book up.
Also since returning my screen time has doubled.
Part of what happens when you start to engage with yourself and the world around you is you get bored.
More often than not, I find myself scrolling to distract myself. But when you stop, and you can’t distract yourself, you find that the world for most of it doesn’t have too much going on in it.
I realize that I have been rebelling against the boredom in my life. That boredom has become a true four letter word for me. It is the ultimate negativity to be bored. But so much of sobriety is learning to feel comfortable bored.
And I don’t mean be bored so you can then go do something totally different. That in itself is a bit of addict mentality.
I’ll stop using this so that I can do that. If I do that then I can be this person I’ve always wanted to be.
That is escapism. Using. Dependencies on outside forces to live your life.
What I mean is truly not replacing the activity with anything else. So you can feel yourself get bored.
I had that moment the other day. I was hit with a wave of discomfort. I felt the pangs of boredom. And quickly tried to replace them with tasks. I should do this thing. I should do that. I should be a better employee. Husband. Creative. Human.
I pushed those out of my head. I sat with my boredom.
I realized that was the closest I’ve ever gotten in my adult life to understanding what the phrase you are enough means.
Strip away all of the distractions, bullshit, labels, everything. And just learn to be alive.
You are enough. You are allowed to live. Be.
The Beacon Beats 