What Would My Brain Do?

If I cut out all the noise?

When I was in middle school, I had a 45 minute bus ride because I was on the route that had to go to the far rural reaches of the area to pick up all the farm kids. This was 1997. There were no cell phones, no iPods. I probably had a disc man but I very much doubt I was allowed to bring it to school. There was nothing to distract me. Nothing to fill my ear holes with. I had to just… be.

I’ve been trying to remember what I did for that hour and a half every day. I probably read a lot, but I also probably stared out the window and constructed elaborate daydreams in my head. When was the last time I did that? Just let my brain wander?

When was the last time any of us did that?

Do we even remember how?

There’s a lot of talk right now about social media and the internet and all the ways it’s bad for us. But one thing I think we’re not talking about enough is the way we’ve eliminated any moment of quiet for our brains to just … do their thing. There’s no room for us to have our own thoughts without immediately checking to see what everyone else thinks. In making our lives so readily shareable we’ve also made them utterly observable, and that changes how we move through the world. It changes how we experience our own lives in ways that I don’t think are good.

I don’t think humans were meant to have this much noise in our heads or this many eyes constantly reading over our shoulders. I don’t think we were meant to have so many options that we can spend a week deciding which laundry basket to buy. I don’t think we were meant to have so many voices screaming at us, however well intentioned. I don’t think we were meant to let the entire world into our minds every single day.

And I think that by making communication so ubiquitous we’ve also devalued it in many ways. It’s easier to throw up an IG story and go on with our day. But it means more if someone texts us to tell us something because they were thinking about us, specifically. That’s connection. Real, human connection. It’s in the choosing of people. The I had 10 minutes and I picked you to talk to of it.

My dopamine receptors think that more likes = better, but in the words of [Title of Show]: I’d rather be nine people’s favorite thing than a hundred people’s ninth favorite thing.

And it’s a two way street, the give and take of a live conversation, even through texts on our phone. Posting something on social media puts the onus on everyone else in our lives to ‘check in’ on that platform. Theoretically we’re doing the ‘sharing’ but it makes the receiving part everyone else’s responsibility.

I mean, no wonder everyone feels lonely all the time.

So, yes. I’m joining the ranks of people getting off all the socials. I’ve done a lot of deleting and archiving of posts, though I haven’t deleted my profiles just yet. I’m leaving them, for now at least, to keep control of my name, and also in case that really is something someone cares about in the future when I eventually sell my books. For several years I’ve been saying I’d get off social entirely if I weren’t trying to be an author, but like… I will cross that bridge when I come to it and I’m done making myself miserable in the meantime.

The process of taking myself offline as much as possible¹ has felt truly empowering. This capitalist, attention-economy hellscape wants me to give my brain to the tech overlords. It wants me to spend all my money. It wants me to feel overwhelmed and hopeless and desperate and like I’m always too much but not enough.

No more. I’m taking my brain back. The internet doesn’t get to decide how I feel about myself. Instagram doesn’t get to convince me to use my hard earned money to buy shit I don’t need. No one gets any input on my life unless I specifically let them in.

Because, seriously, why do I spend half my life seeking out other people’s opinions. Reading books about why slow, deep work is good when I already fucking know that. Somehow ending up watching videos of people telling me how to ‘do minimalism correctly.’ In forums watching adults who’ve played the cello fewer years than me fight about whether the Suzuki method is a cult.²

I willfully give this shit my attention. Over and over again. Even knowing that I shouldn’t, that it doesn’t matter, that the entire world is designed to distract me, I keep giving my brain to it all. And I just… I can’t anymore.

I feel like I’m in a raging sandstorm. Everything, everywhere wants my attention. Millions of data points hurling at me from all directions all the time. Even now that I’m off socials, it’s still everywhere. It’s still the discord servers I’m on and the newsletters I subscribe to and the ads in the tv shows I watch. Even digital places that I enjoy with people that I like.. I just… it’s too much. Everything is too much.

Who would I be if I was the only voice I listened to for a while? What would I do differently if I knew that the only people who knew about it were the ones I specifically told? How would my relationship to my brain change if I gave it some fucking space?

So, I’m doing an experiment. For the month of February I am getting rid of as much input as possible. No tv. No movies. No discord. No NYT games on my commute. I’m not going to look for ‘inspo’ about anything and I’m not going to read any newsletters and I’m going to work on unsubscribing and filtering email that I don’t want. I’m going to write down questions instead of immediately googling everything.³ I’m going to try to get back to that 13 year old who created worlds in her head as she stared out the window.

I want to see what will happen.

Will I listen to musicals from beginning to end again like I did when I was a teenager? Will I practice my cello more? Will I write more? Will I reorganize my kitchen? Will I work on the cross stitch that my grandmother gave to me literally decades ago that I’ve been meaning to finish forever?

I don’t know.

But I want to.

So, I’m going to find out.

1. Yes I absolutely see the irony in writing these words on a Substack, but listen. Life is complicated.

2. For the record, I am a huge fan of Suzuki. Especially on the other side of a music degree. The meticulous progression of skill is astonishing. The culture part of it is another story and is 100% about people being people and not about the teaching technique.

3. I am going to read books, at least a little. My hold of Housemates finally came in, and I have an arc of Nova Ren Suma’s latest that I’m dying to read. But nothing that is telling me how to change anything about my life or myself. Like. At all.