45. A reflection on the inability to write

And the evergreen importance of slowing down.

I have to level with you, my dear, patient audience who has waited 3 months since my last missive. In March, I spent three glorious weeks in Japan. The impetus was my good friends Nick and Miki’s wedding, a stunning event in the heart of Tokyo. I extended the trip to see old friends in Hiroshima, Kyoto, and Sapporo as well.

I gained all sorts of new inspirations, and I was working on a post to encapsulate this…

… yet I haven’t mustered the energy to post anything. Why on earth? I kept asking myself, and couldn’t articulate a clear answer.

I lived through April and May enjoying my time, while feeling a slight sense of panic that I might be losing my ability to articulate and reflect upon my experiences. It was only this weekend that I pinpointed the source of that panic.

I’m consuming too much media (again).¹

I’ve slipped away from my pledges from late last year, and back into the habit of not only checking Instagram direct messages but also scrolling the feed. Once I snap out of the feed, I’ll unconsciously flip over to check my email, and immediately feel compelled to read the next article that comes in. From Instagram to Mail to the Weather app to a Podcast or Spotify, the content cycle goes around and around. Even if I’m not on my phone and properly adulting by doing my chores, I’ll automatically pop on a video or podcast to keep me company.

This loss of control is all the more ironic because I pride myself on being a student of the mind. I catch up on Love is Blind’s inconsequential gossip in order to armchair-psychoanalyze the cast, and avoid blindspots in my own interpersonal relationships. I follow Substack newsletters that analyze culture, news, and the human condition. I learn life hacks from The Lazy Genius to optimize my daily routines. But while enjoying all this content, and telling myself I do so in the name of education, I’ve been overlooking the fact there is a limit to how much I can take in.

How do I know this is damaging? I go through some days feeling rushed and distracted, even if my schedule isn’t super packed. I have been creatively stymied, despite all I enjoyed in Japan and the last few months of life in full-bloom, increasingly-summery Vancouver. Perfectionism has always been the white noise in the background of my creativity, but content overload has rendered me more complacent in the identity of a consumer rather than a creator.

I’m left with the distinctly sad impression that the amount of content flooding my brain is preventing me from having original thoughts. I’m not allowing myself enough quiet time or space to synthesize the day and make new connections between ideas.

Now, all I want is to return to the idea upon which I founded this Substack nearly two years ago: mindful art appreciation. Breathing deeply, and pondering one piece of work. I think this is the solution to overwhelm: to slow down, and relearn how to focus on one thing at a time.

Some ways I will try to restore balance (but no promises!):

• Moving Instagram (and any other problematic apps) to a different location on my phone home screen, as often as necessary. This short-circuits the mindless sequence of swipes that usually open the app. I learned this from my friend Grace.

• More readily deleting emails that don’t serve me. Time is limited; I don’t have to read every article, or fill out every random survey, just because it came into my inbox.

• Following the advice in this article to pursue digital minimalism. I haven’t tried any of the concrete plans like a 30-day pledge, but for starters, I will test out reading more physical books than digital articles.

• Limiting music to the car, and to my playlist reserved for creative time; limiting podcasts to max 2/day.

I have no grand hopes in telling this story of creative burnout. I don’t expect to revolutionize anyone’s mindset or control anyone’s behavior around the media landscape. What I do hope is that publishing these unvarnished thoughts will help me refocus, return to first principles, and regain motivation to write mindfully. I appreciate that you subscribers are sticking around, and I want to serve you by continuing to share beautiful things and help us think in new ways. 💞

Do you resonate with any of these thoughts about content overwhelm? When you’re feeling burned out or uninspired, what helps? Let me know in the comments and let’s continue the conversation!

1. Not to add to the noise, but if you’re interested, here are some articles that facilitated this epiphany. I bolded the most poignant part of each quote:

• “I don’t owe it to anyone on social media apps to show them any part of my day. My time is better spent in process and practice. My time is better spent staring at a squirrel out the window. There are things that I do not consider a great use of my time, especially my quiet time during the day when my kids are at school – going to Target, looking at the books in Goodwill, watching a tv show, napping, looking at the mugs in Goodwill, buying a croissant and a coffee – and all of those are a better use of my time than social media. (They might, in fact, be fine uses of my time if they afford me space to think and dream.)” – Julie Falatko, “The Shiny Luster of the Internet is Gone”

• “According to the CDC Children 8-10 spend 6 hours on devices; those aged 11-14 spend nearly 9 hours. That was before the pandemic. The number of US teenagers who are online continuously is increasing at a dramatic pace.” – Ruth Gaskovski, “From Feeding Moloch to ‘Digital Minimalism’”

• “Because AI, and specifically ChatGPT, lack a body, our involvement with these technologies moves us away from our own bodies. The further we remove ourselves from our bodies, the further we remove ourselves from the labor of freedom and into the laziness of captivity, for such labor builds up our bodies, and, as Joshua Gibbs posits in his book How To Be Unlucky, our souls absorb the consequences of what we do with our bodies.” – Mark Botts, “A Sabbath Reflection on Artificial Intelligence & the Human Body”

• “I find that people often believe they have a writing technique problem, when, actually, what they have is a sincerity problem. They think that writing is onerous, when, actually, they mean that writing as if they’re someone else is onerous.” – Sasha Chapin, “If You Have Writer's Block, Maybe You Should Stop Lying”

• As usual, I’m indebted to The Commonplace for a lot of these, and for the reverential brand of minimalism espoused by Tsh Oxenreider.