Making Online Life an Afterthought

In addiction, we take on characteristics of our drug of choice—in this case, the internet.

This is the latest of many personal dispatches on culture, healing, and spirituality from a dual Canadian-American living in Thailand. Find popular free essays here and access the rest of PERFECT HUNGER (including The Practice and Link-Ups) by upgrading here:

The street we call home in Chiang Mai

I’ve been thinking lately about how, when I lived in Thailand two decades ago, being online wasn’t an always-on, primary thing. Living life was primary. Being online was an afterthought.

Getting online—something I did daily as a digital nomad freelancing remotely—meant squeezing into an internet café packed with twelve-year-old boys. I’d pay the attendant for an hour of usage, wait until a computer freed up, and then take my seat to log into Hotmail. On either side of me, boys played video games or huddled around to cheer on their friends—some of them novice monks in orange robes with newly shaved heads.

I’d check email, reply to family and friends, submit work assignments I’d completed offline in MS Word and saved to a thumb drive, and then leave—getting back to the rest of my life.

Returning to Thailand this past summer, I wasn’t surprised to find coffee shops with free wi-fi on every corner, replacing the internet cafés and dial-up connections. I wasn’t surprised to see twelve-year-olds wandering around with their heads down, eyes trained on smartphones. And I wasn’t surprised that I, too, was chronically online here, just as I’d been back in Canada.

It’s just the way of things now. Being online is primary. The rest of life is an afterthought.

What I feel around this is a growing disquiet that echoes what I felt before quitting alcohol: an internal struggle, a cognitive dissonance steeped in loss and regret, the pain of knowing I’m willingly participating in something that takes more than it gives and costs more than I’d bargained for. Years, moments, connections, feelings. Life. That’s what’s been lost.

And, just like those months before quitting alcohol, I see a choice before me. I see how easy it’d be to just carry on—to do what’s normal, expected, what most people do. The scrolling, the checking, the consuming, the producing, the seeking, the content. We might blame and complain, yet we continue.

Continuing on is easier, in part because it aligns with today’s unspoken agreement and collective addiction. It’s also easier because, by keeping online life primary, I avoid confronting the cost: harm to relationships, dulled intuition, a narrowed perspective paired with obsessive compulsion—all hallmarks of addiction. Not to mention taking on characteristics of my drug of choice. In this case, the internet.

I’ve absorbed the ambient urgency, growing impatient, scattered, and guarded. I swim in a sea of groupthink, forgetting my breath and my body. I measure my worth in metrics, losing touch with my deep inner knowing. I consume and produce, consume and produce, consume and… Even compassion feels harder to access.

My reflex is to cover it up, surrounding myself with voices that commiserate, enable, numb out, and check out.

Or, I can turn and look. I can see what I’ve sacrificed by being online. I can ask: How much life have I missed?

I got my first smartphone at 36. Around that same time—more than ten years ago now—my relationship with being online started shifting. These days, I barely touch my phone (only using it as a clock and to call ride-shares), but find myself fused with my laptop.

I know it’s a problem. I feel rage, grief, and shame. And yet, here I am—still online, still writing about it, still enmeshed in the same fucking thing.

But I am looking straight on. My relationship with technology is becoming more selective and skillful. I’ve written about this before, but to recap: I’ve stepped away from all social media except Substack, the only tv or streaming I watch is Thai soap operas, and I’ve established new boundaries for responding to emails, private messages, etc.

Returning to Thailand after all these years has provided a reference point—a way to measure how much “being online” has changed both the world around me and my inner self, reshaping how I think, perceive, connect, and experience. I feel awakened here, my vision clearer. I’m making a conscious effort to relearn how to make offline life primary again. To really be here, where I can…

Wake at dawn to the insistent purrs of my Siamese cats. Getting my ear nibbled when I don’t take the hint.

Practice Thai writing and reading each morning before getting online. Feeling like a student again, pen to paper, writing out the cheery script over and over.

Notice the young man at the end of our street, who’s constructed a tent from the used clothing he sells—jeans, jean jackets, graphic tees, hoodies. He has a snare drum inside the makeshift tent and alternates between playing and dozing. (I’ve never seen him make a sale, but if I were a cool Gen Zer, I’d absolutely be shopping there.)

Say hello to the pride of six cats on leashes outside a patched-up, ramshackle house a few doors down in our alley. Every evening, someone comes out to hand-wash each cat with a damp washcloth before they all head inside.

Nod to the gruff, grumpy man a few blocks away. Shirtless, enormous belly, living in a one-room home with four pit bulls who bark ferociously as we pass by his gate. Sometimes he grunts in acknowledgment. An old surgery scar winds from L4 to L5.

Wander through tucked-away alleys off the main drag, unexpectedly stumbling across the miniature house where I spent some dark, troubled times in my twenties.

Lay on my Chinese Medicine doctor’s treatment table each week, acupuncture needles along my spine and around my eyes. Listening to the neighborhood roosters crow as I rest there. Hearing his phone ring in the next room and recognizing the exact same chime he used two decades ago.

Walk past the local temple at sunset, the golden Buddha statue glowing in the day’s last light, young kids kicking a plastic ball around the courtyard.

Smile at the toddler, piled onto a motorbike with his parents and packages, putting his tiny hands together to bow at the temple—automatic, unprompted—as they speed by.

Hold my partner Randy’s hand as we walk to the market each evening. Passing familiar faces, bowing and smiling. Chatting with our regular vendors. Buying fresh-squeezed orange juice, slow-cooked meat, eggs, rice, and veggies.

Notice the young woman with profound disabilities who comes alive each evening. Her family turns on music inside their food stall, and she dances—confidently, boldly, joyfully.

Delight in returning home to find a belated Christmas card waiting—my first mail delivery here—from my sisters in Georgia.

Sit with Randy, side by side on the floor of my bedroom, reading a decree we wrote twelve years ago now—three countries, one divorce, two marriages (to each other) later. Honoring our love, expressing gratitude, inviting abundance, invoking support from the Universe, the Tao, our compassionate spirits.

All this. Everything real. Letting life in.

And as I let it in, I watch everything I create and consume online lose its allure, its importance, its urgency. I remember there’s an entire world beyond our screens—right here, right at our fingertips. Fingertips not meant for tapping keys but for brushing skin, fur, water, earth—everything, everything, everything.

Right here, in the unmediated immediate. Right here, where life itself again becomes primary. Connected, tethered, embodied, and real.

With love from Thailand,
Dana

How about you?

I’m so grateful you’re here, and I welcome any questions you have for me.

I’d also love to know what feels primary for you right now: Your life offline? Your online existence? Either way, how do you feel about it?

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