Sobriety from Screen Time & Overwork, Conversation with the Edge
How are we refusing to actually be here?
Dearest Reader,
Over the past year, I’ve attended a handful of poet-philosopher David Whyte’s “Three Sundays” series. These live, virtual gatherings unfold three weekends at a time and feature themes near and dear to my heart and practice. While the topic changes, all invite deeper conversation with self, others, the edge.
The November series—Return to Ireland: Poetry, Myth & Music for the Soul—holds special magic and meaning. It’s woven into my ancestry and my thirst for a very particular landscape. A landscape found in Ireland, yes. Also here in Nova Scotia and the neighbouring Atlantic provinces. And in a place you can’t find on a map. A place born of some deeper, un-mappable inheritance.
This place is what David Whyte calls “the edge.” This place is a conversation between what is oceanic, ever moving, vast…and the seeming solidity of our interior. That earthen ground of mountains, forest, self. That terrain we sometimes call home. And yet, our truest home is not there at all—safe and grounded and solid. Our truest home is in the tension and the meeting. Waves on cliffs. Ocean on sand. Gaze on horizon.
I mention all this partly because it’s a powerful series. Also because I’m entering week 2 of my “social media and screen time sobriety,” defined by the rules that I shared last day (in the paid section, after the jump). A question positioned at this edge—and an impetus for upending my relationship with email, work, and social media—goes this way:
How are we not present for landscape? For the ancestral story it and we yet hold? How, lost in our screens, our work, and our selves, are we missing it? How are we avoiding the edge and refusing to actually be here?
After the jump, I’ll share how screen time sobriety is going lately. As with ditching alcohol nearly three years back, I’m finding that this new layer of giving up a thing is merely what
calls “the invitation.” Way more awaits on the other side. Way more awaits when we stand at the edge in the wind and rain and allow the glorious elements to weather us.CONTINUED for paid subscribers below.
In case you missed my “new rules” around screen time, social media, and overwork—plus the backstory on why I’m doing this—head here. For today, notes on how it’s going.