On the train home from my travels, watching how many people were passing the journey scrolling Instagram, X or TikTok, I felt how much cutting myself off had given me. Not a hundred percent — I did keep up with the news reasonably well — but enough to start thinking in slightly different terms again.
The holiday I was coming back from was partly a time of rest and partly a time of reflection. Between thousands of steps, hundreds of photographs and dozens of works of art seen, when the evening tiredness would not allow even reading a book, I had time to meet my own thoughts.
Cut Off From the Cyberworld
This trip was exceptional for me. For the first time in several years I cut myself off from email, from social media, from communication with other people altogether, and focused on resting. It was not particularly hard, given that whole days of walking ended with camping out in bed in the evening, and a tired body had no appetite left for extra activity like logging into an app or checking mail. What surprised me was something else: I did not feel the need. As if I had soaked into the holiday, the rest, the beautiful green, the rivers, the streams and the canals, and the extraordinary paintings. With space for reflection, I could also notice what happens to me when I am not checking the reach of my last post, when I do not have to reply to comments quickly to build visibility for my own content, and finally — when I do not feel the inner compulsion to forge every reflection into another post. Nothing was chasing me, except perhaps the closing time of the museums I wanted to see. My thoughts flowed freely, in any direction. I could simply be, experience, and let that experiencing change me.
A Failing Autopilot
I have the impression that for some time now I have been navigating life on autopilot. First because of health problems, then because of undoing them, and in the meantime because of a difficult job market and other challenges life had in store for me. This past year — spent on a development programme and then an internship — surprised me with a breakthrough in recovery. But as the old folk wisdom goes, things had to get worse before they could get better. My autopilot started failing, and the time came to build new ways of living through reality.
The consequences of traumatic events can be stretched out over time, but they make themselves felt most once the person who experienced them begins to feel safe. And that is exactly what I felt when I got the internship. So I did my internship during working hours, and after hours I painstakingly put myself back together from a thousand pieces. That work is ongoing, and its most important element is rest.
It was not as simple a task as it sounds. Plenty of obstacles came up along the way, among them the fact that for a long time rest meant returning memories and emotions. Yet I managed to get past that obstacle too. So this last holiday was no longer something like mental life support — it was finally space to take a deeper breath and consider what I actually need in life. What still brings me joy, and what could start bringing it again? And how do I find time for all of it?
Back Into Living Offline
Cutting off gave me space to catch up on some films from the Marvel universe, read a book about Van Gogh, crochet a hat and stare at the wonderful architecture of Dutch villages and towns.
Since coming back I think only about when I will find time for them again. Outside working hours my priorities have started flowing away from being present online and building visibility, and towards more and more involvement in life offline.
There is also a plan to cut off. I once gave up social media for over a year and it was a genuinely remarkable time. I stopped focusing on what I still cannot do and on comparing myself with others. Instead I started resting more, which translated into a greater appetite for growth and into creativity. And although I had a completely different goal back then, the memory of that reviving energy works powerfully on my imagination now. I would very much like to draw on it again.
The coming weeks will be interesting — they will go on working out which media I want to give up and where I will still need to look in every now and then. Which accounts can I deactivate temporarily, and which will "hang" there until I come back? There will be no shortage of challenges — the habit of glancing at what is buzzing in the social grass is strong.
At the same time I cannot wait to take the challenge on. I think that reducing my own presence online is another element of the same work — a way into the question of how I want to live, and on what terms I want to exist in a world that is changing so fast.
