Stop snorting narrative

I’ve been addicted to keeping my brain occupied for as long as I can remember. From grades 2 to 5 I would come home and immediately call my friends¹, just to not feel alone, and I’d chatter with them for hours on end. By Grade 6, I knew my way around the pirate sites well enough that I could download all the books my heart desired. I used these books as a way to escape the dreary reality of childhood, a habit that served me well in my hostel years (no internet, but I lived next to the library? Yes please!).

When I went to college, I had the internet again. It was scary how easy it was to substitute reading for social media - especially something like Reddit, which is mostly text based and allows for rabbit holes that felt exactly like reading a less rigorous Mary Roach book. I stopped reading long form almost entirely in those 4 years (except for around the exams, where I would restrict my internet usage and immediately fall into a Very Large Novel series. Thanks, Worm!).

Like most of us, I’ve been struggling with some form of dependence on social media for the better part of a decade. But when I make the effort to remove myself from them, my life doesn’t get better. It isn’t the social media that is the problem, it is my desire to consume narrative. Stories are fundamental to who we are as humans², and I am old enough that I know how to substitute for the internet. The exercise, then, is not to merely stop doing the thing that is hurting me. It is to answer a few fundamental questions for myself:

• What does rest look like for me, to actually feel restored?
• What activity do I fill my time with, to actually allow for thought?