About That Resolution

January, silence, and my One Weird Trick for better phone hygiene

On December 29th, as I drove from one home (childhood) to another (current), I realized I had not had a day to myself in over a week. Eleven days, to be exact. I was going nuts. Ten minutes into the drive, I got some bad news from a loved one. A small, quick feeling that the world was ending. The rain was pouring down, and provided a pleasant level of stress: I could only concentrate on moving forward, safely. After an hour, the rain let up, and I hit no traffic, not even at rush hour. I spent an hour on the phone with my friend Caro, who was driving across the country. I tried to describe to her the sunset that had suddenly appeared in front of me: I feel like I’m driving towards a mountain that’s on fire, but it’s not scary, I said. I tried to take a photo but it looked like any old sunset. I’m always a little glad when a phone can’t do the sky justice.

After New Year’s, I enjoyed a three-day stretch of barely leaving the house. I went to the gym, I went ice skating. Otherwise I was home, sucking up the quiet like a dry sponge exposed to water. These are my favorite days of the year, I kept saying to myself. I can’t even tell you what I did; anyway, that’s not the point. There was a fresh, vibrating quality to the silence. Similar to the quiet after a big snow.

This year in particular, I’ve relished the turnover of December to January. On the 29th and 30th, I stayed home to manically clean—okay, tidy—my apartment. I threw out so many old grocery/pantry items, something that I tend to avoid out of food waste guilt. I organized my pens.¹ I have never before organized my pens. I fixed up the office. Three weeks after my holiday party, I finally put my rugs back down. I was uncharacteristically obsessive about all this. I’m still not sure why, or maybe I just don’t want to say. On January second, the tarot cards slapped me in the face.

I tend to make resolutions every year, and then forget them. The problem, usually, is that I have too many. I just found a note in my phone listing ten resolutions for 2020—ha!!! The best resolutions come in ones and twos. In 2015 or 2016, after 20 years of on-and-off disordered eating, I made one rule at the beginning of the year: I wasn’t allowed to try to get smaller. Somehow, it stuck.

This year I’ve set myself two formal resolutions, though they’re more like goals.

1. Do one pull-up²

2. Finish a shitty first draft of my book³

Other resolutions have crept in, like a desire to follow through on more creative projects. And then there are the reset-dreams that appear every January. Spend more time reading. Daily morning pages. Reach out to more people. Spend less time on my phone.

The phone thing is one that constantly plagues me, and obviously I am not alone in this. We are all ruined. (It feels especially acute right now, as the news becomes even more dire.⁴) I was recently told that of my close friends, I’m the most anguished about my phone use, though I’m not the person using my phone the most. I am constantly creating rules for myself, some of which stick. I have always felt that I dodged real-deal alcoholism like a very close bullet. (I’m half wasp, half Irish Catholic.) All that addictive brain-wiring has been funneled into my relationship with screens. I am desperate for peace and have never found it.

It’s been funny to see Brick—a small physical device that locks you out of certain apps until you tap your phone against it—have a moment over the last two weeks. See: Deez Links, Business Insider, so many people on “Notes.” This made me laugh:

This is correct AND ALSO perfectly indicative of the way that the concept of “logging off” is simply a part of online life. None of us is brave enough to be (for example) Mary Ruefle, a true freak (complimentary) who lives in the Vermont woods and keeps various collections of strange bits in envelopes on her kitchen table. A Bennington acquaintance once told me that they went to her house, and saw a full, worn envelope labeled “Stains.”⁵ Personally I cannot live this life because I am addicted to my friends, and I love texting. But it is a dream that has held me in its grasp for decades.

Luckily, there are ways to live this dream for hours at a time. I have One Weird Trick that has drastically improved my relationship with my phone ever since I implemented it a decade ago. Half the time I tell people about it they look at me as if I’m trying to sell them on oil pulling or dry brushing. I simply turn my phone off before I go to bed, and keep it off for as long as possible after I wake up.

I understand that as a freelancer with no regular caretaking duties, this habit is especially easy for me. I also believe that sleeping with your phone within reach does not please God⁶. I am always shocked when people forget the existence of alarm clocks⁷. I know how my nervous system feels when I wake up and immediately look at my phone, and I know how my nervous system feels when I don’t look at my phone for four hours. Have you ever been to an artist residency? Have you wanted to? It feels like that. They are the same phenomenon. I do not think that most of us will live in peace for extended periods of time, but I do think that we can create pockets of it for ourselves. A morning is the first week of January of the day.

I have tried the Brick; mine currently sits next to my record player, another analog implementation that I use with varying frequency. The issue with the Brick is that you must decide to use it. I’ve found it quite useful for leaving the house and spending an afternoon in the city without constantly looking at my phone. But recently, I’ve created the most aggressive setting for it. I tap the Brick, and all my phone can do is text. I spend whole days working like this. It’s wonderful.

All these things work just as well as they fail. I’ve been doing morning pages pretty religiously for the last two weeks, and it feels like drugs. I’m very aware that at some point this year, I will fall off the wagon. I’ll get back on, or I won’t. Next January I’ll start again.

1. I thought I had too many pens, when in fact I had too many MARKERS. I didn’t know!

2. My therapist, who is very rarely insane, told me I could do this in 6 weeks. My personal trainer said I could achieve it by the end of the calendar year.

3. For the sake of accountability and bravery I will state in this footnote that I am aiming to do this by June 1. Also, “shitty” is not derogatory.

4. I found this dispatch from Minnesota informative. This post has a good list of local community orgs. I’m also watching the responses here. Have you read the n+1 piece on ICE recruitment yet?

5. Mary also, always, asks the best questions at Bennington Poetry Q&As. After Shane McCrae read from his recent retelling of the Inferno, he mentioned that he was stillborn. After a few undergrads asked boring questions, Mary raised her hand: “How did they bring you back?” (He didn’t know.)

6. Take what I say with a grain of salt. One of the most brilliant writers I’ve ever met—if anyone’s work pleases God, it’s hers—sleeps with her phone under her pillow.

7. I have one of these. I briefly had one of the classic GE ones, but got tired of it for various reasons. I’m looking to upgrade to Japanese vintage.