How a stopped watch convinced me to disconnect

My 10-year-old, Ramona, wanted a watch. School started again (hybrid where we are -- two days a week in school with half the class, three days a week online at home), and she wanted to know what time it is while she's biking to and from school. So we ordered a watch from our local watch shop, and picked it up. A week later, it stopped working. Distressed, I emailed the watch shop, and they told me to bring it in. I put it in my bag and waited a few days.

When I took the watch out of my bag, it was working again. I fiddled with it for a minute, and realized that the knob on the side (which I just learned is called the crown) must have been popped out, and that's why it stopped. When I tossed it into my bag, the crown got pushed in and it started up again.

The thing is, I've worn an analog watch for years. I know how the crown works. But as soon as Ramona told me it wasn't working, I got reactive and a little outraged ("We just bought that watch last week! You'd think they would put a new battery in it before they give it to us! I am going to contact them immediately and make them make this right!"). I never even took the watch in my hands, but instead just saw her holding it up to show me the second hand wasn't moving. I should have slowed down, sat down with her and the watch, and really looked at it. It wouldn't have even taken any time. Two minutes.

But it feels like we don't even have two minutes. Everything is overwhelming.

Here's what this very small incident with the watch taught me: I need to find ways to slow down, even a little. I need to find ways to pay attention to the real world around me. And the internet and social media aren't helping. There was a time when social media made me feel connected, and there might be a time when it does again, but right now, it's making me stressed and angry. If anything, it's making me feel disconnected. I'm sick of the reactionary barrage, I'm sick of the bias and divisiveness, I'm sick of people doing idiotic things and then my social media feed showing me the idiots. I'm sick of the only solace being dog videos.

I need less doomscrolling, more real world engagement, even if that engagement is with a tree. But certainly that engagement needs to be with my human family. And my dog. 

The fact is that I've got work to do, both writing work but also parenting and general paying attention. Something in my fridge smells weird. That sort of thing. And while in the past social media has been a welcome respite, a little bit of hilarity in my day, it's not that right now. And I can tell it's just going to get worse and worse until the election, and maybe after. I already know who I'm voting for (Biden/Harris) and that's not going to change. I already know how I'm voting (absentee) and how I'm going to do it (I requested my ballot, and am going to drop it off in person at city hall).

I'm not telling you what to do. And I'm also not quitting social media entirely. But I'm listening to my gut and my gut is telling me that the internet isn't helping me right now. My gut is telling me I'll get more creative work done if I can be more intentional about my social media use, and that that will likely mean purposely going for a day or three every week where I don't look at it at all. Clean break.

I want to finish this year with more writing done, not having my only accomplishments being ephemeral quips. I want to have long, interesting, hilarious conversations. I want to write inspired books that spring out of a thought thread I was able to follow for an hour while I was running with my dog. I want to figure out what smells weird in my fridge.*

I'm asking myself these questions about the internet and social media:
1. What do I want to get out of it? Do I want to connect with friends? Then do that. And log off after.
2. What would happen if I took one day off of social media? Two? What would I miss? Would it matter? If I don't know that my college roommate's sister got a new plant, what will happen? If I don't see a selfie of a semi-celebrity I connected with once, what will happen?
3. What would happen if I didn't record my own activity? If I bake bread and no one sees, does it exist? Can I eat it? (Yes.) If I exercise but don't record it in my fitness app, did it happen? (Yes.) 

These aren't meant to be leading questions. I'm really asking. Maybe what you need right now is mindless distraction, and that's okay. Maybe your best friend got a new cat, and you want to see how the cat's doing. Totally reasonable. I will share that I left my phone at home during my run this morning, and I figured out some problems with the story I'm working on during the run. I'd rather make my story better than know how fast I ran (today, at least). 

*You'll be glad to know that, since writing the stuff above, I cleaned my fridge and located the source the smell. You don't want to know what it was.