Photos from my summer offline

This summer I deleted the Instagram app and blocked Substack from my phone. Apart from Google Maps and a few administrative emails, I’ve been off the internet for weeks. It’s been great. So, I deleted my Instagram account completely, disabled the data for my phone’s extraneous functions, and I’m going to keep Substack blocked (I have the Substack app and URL categorized under “restricted content,” lol) so that I can only read people’s newsletters when they arrive in my inbox, and post when I’m sitting down at a computer. I’m going to start including pictures via newsletter instead because this method doesn’t require you or me to be exposed to any form of endless scroll. Here they are:

These feel like stupid choices to have to contemplate, but unfortunately they are consequential for me due to how much time I have wasted on the social internet. I’m trying to be more deliberate with how I use my time or invite others to use their time because I’ve been around more birth and more death this year—so, more frequently confronted with the fact that a resource which can seem immaterial and endless will eventually run out.

I’ve also been surprised by the truth that no one knows whether they have the luxury of squandering their days, or if they have to acknowledge the preciousness of their time because it is almost totally elapsed. I think the social internet is a way of evading these truths because it seems to let us inhabit several realities at once, whether through allowing us to construct multiple personas that can exist alongside one another, or through allowing our bodies to remain in one place while our consciousness is evacuated to other, more interesting locations. The social internet makes you feel like you can multiply your time by splintering it into dozens of parallel universes but this isn’t true; I feel this whenever I look up from my phone and realize that I spent more minutes scrolling or posting than I intended to, and that each minute of consumption or so-called “content creation” was still deducted from the only timeline I have.

I can see my children growing and I want the chance to be fully lost in them while they still live with me. I am trying to give my friends and neighbors an undivided version of myself. Whenever I read the Gospels I am struck by the quality of Jesus’ presence, his willingness to give bespoke, undiluted attention to whoever is before him. Presence and attention both require time, which the social internet systematically undervalues, which I am trying to reclaim.