HOW TO GET OUT OF HELL

I want to stay in hell (go back)

or: Plan A was throwing my phone into the ocean, this is plan b

The idea for this page was designed when I was feeling wildly good about my screentime (March 2024?). I had deleted safari from my browser. I read 8 books in a month, and they were really good books. I got really into James Balwin, Philip Roth, and Jeanette Winterson. I thought I could make a webpage explaining how I did this, but it turns out I suck at having a decent relationship with my phone. Like everyone else, execpt that no one is worried about! We're all addicted and somehow we're all cool with it. A couple years ago I did a presentation on how modern digital surviellance affects abortion access. One of my friends asked me if researching surviellance had changed my relationship with technology, and the honest answer was no! I feel the same when I read a good essay about screen addiction. Or I think about the quote that goes "The cage is open, why are you still in there?" Sure, the technology is wildly addictive and regulation should be put in place, but it won't. I don't think this is my fault, but I think I'm the only one who can get myself out of the whole. This is an effort to at least scratch at the walls.

tiny blog

marks on the wall

4/13/25: hi from rock bottom, wish you were here

Over the past few weeks, my phone started decaying. My camera wouldn't focus. My blue dot became untethered. My phone wouldn't buzz when a text came in. I could access the internet with no friction, and that felt wrong. As if my phone was become transparent in its intentions: you could die here. I took it to the store and my phone died in the back room. They had to replace it, it was unfixable, little sensors I couldn't see were too screwed up. For a few hours, my phone sat in my pocket as a metal rectangle. I waited at the train station by myself with no music and no entertainment and i literally started banging on the bars of the railing. A couple people have linked this page as inspirational, and it's touching, but I haven't gotten anywhere. This might be the worst its been, maybe ever.

I'm not good with silence, I'm always listening to something. Music tells me what to feel, over and over until I'm not feeling anything. My finger is hyperactively clicking the NEXT button, even when I know the track I want to listen to is silence. It's happening right now, and it's hard to be bothered when Florence Welch is the one telling me what to do. I'm the same / I'm the same / I'm trying to change

I haven't read any books since March, where I only completed two. I haven't drawn or written, I'm procrastinating like crazy. I spend this time reading fanfiction, the ultimate espacism. Fandom is an interesting blindspot in the digital minimalism community, and I wanted to talk about it. It's harder to catagorize, because AO3 was not designed to keep people scrolling, it's an archive. There's real art, created by real people, for no other reason than the love of fiction. It's also taking me out of reality in a way that's leaving me frozen. When I was younger I spent a lot of time reading, sure, but I also wrote over 100,000 words of fanfiction, locked in my bedroom. A lot of it makes me cringe now, but that was an act of creation. Now I put all my energy into consumption, and feel blocked whenever I try to write. I don't know how to get the characters to talk normally. That shift from active to passive happen without me noticing, but the intensity that I like media at hasn't gone down. I don't really know what to do about it, maybe start writing again, put the energy into art.

I'm trying to run away from something. If I let the silence in, I feel the edges of my own terror. In my moments of clarity I want to put my phone down and feel it. Stop attacking myself, stop distracting myself and pay attention to what makes me scared, lonely, eager to find something to numb it out. I want to take myself seriously, and I know this means putting my phone down. I know. The things that are good for you are stupid easy...going to try and get there.

2/10/25

my 7 day plan to get out of hell

Everytime someone compliments this page, or finds it inspiring I feel like some kind of wizard-of-oz esque guy. You can pull back the curtain and find me on my phone. I have tired, it feels futlie, I feel miserable, repeat! Constant consumption has me developing a wordless terror that only goes away if I read fanfiction for 3 hours. I've thought about getting a flip phone, but two factor authentication, and y'know, my frightening ability to rot my brain on the big screen. I take headphones everywhere. I scroll in the morning. I stay up later than I want to. I really don't read. The wordless terror makes it hard to journal. I say more than I want to, and while I can't directly link it, not letting myself think too hard about anything seems like a good suspect. Once I was cleaning my room, then I pulled out my phone with the plan to google the best way to be a neater person like the evidence wasn't the tshirts I was picking up off the ground. I am so, so fucked.


Anyway, I'm going to try and make some change over a WEEK. and record it. The inspiration here is Cary the Snail's video Only Only Consuming Physical Media That Fits On This Shelf For A Month (An Experiment) It's a really fun reality check. "It costs you virtually nothing to continue consuming content. Just your 20s, just your young adult life." There's also Michelle Gia's video understimulating my overstimulated brain for a week she uses the internet for 30 minutes a week, and puts an hour a day into a boring task, like counting rice.

I am writing this at 12:53. am. I have to get up at nine, but I've already gone down a Kendrick v Drake rabbit hole, so might as well keep the night going...

Here's my plan for the next week:

  1. No youtube, tumblr, ao3, reddit, or instagram.
  2. No headphones!

    3. Okay this? this will probably take me down, but then again, if I can't do homework without earbuds that is a problem. Updates to come on if going without earbuds on the bus drives me to a life of crime.

  3. Surf the web like its 1999 - computer labs

    4. I do a lot of work on my laptop in my bed. It takes forever. I have access to library computers - I'm going to try to do most of my college on them. Not even expecting this to be an 100%, but I want to try it.

  4. No streaming services. Yes to pirating movies.

    5. I do have some movies on my list, so if I really want something to watch, I'm starting with The Graduate.

  5. No walking anywhere with my phone.

    6. It makes you look like a loser. It makes me look like a loser.

  6. daily morning pages

    7. this is unreleated and something i just want to do. does not have to be the morning. the idea is just 3 pages of stream-of-thought writing. Ideally in the morning. I want a screen free morning routine!

Conclusion

It is now one in the morning. Tomorrow morning will not be pretty (for me to have this beautiful rountine I need to be up at 8). Honestly, I really don't think I'm capable of most of these. But I really want to try. Even when everything's going okay, screen addiction makes me feel like I have no control over my life. Add something like chronic pain to the mix and that begins to feel intolerable. You have keep crawling out of the graves you dig yourself.

Days 1 and 2

I've gone two days without background music and I'm thinking I should start smoking. I'm writing this update without background music. All that exists is the buzz of my fridge.

Day one was pretty normal. I had a packed schedule, so I only spent about an hour doing work without music. It was unnerving. I was both more focused and checking my phone more than I normally do. There is nothing to do on a library desktop except the thing you're using it for.

Day two has been harder. My day starts and ends with class with six hours of free time in between. I felt jittery and freaked out. This is fairly normal. When I got home and didn't want to do anything, I had to get creative. Instead of scrolling, I sat on the floor and listened to the mountain goats. I drew my coffee machine. I started reading Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man just because it was on my desk. For a while I just layed in bed. Both days I managed to write something down in a journal, but I've been writing more today. When I went back to the library I was working on my laptop. Still looking for distraction, but without my go tos it was easier to get back to what I was working on. Once I finished I grabbed the Winter 2024 copy of the Paris Review. I love their Art of Fiction interviews - I read an interview of Hanif Kureishi, who I'd never heard of before. It was great. I love reading what Novelists have to say. Tune in to see how I handle the return of silence tomorrow!

Days 3, 4, 5, and 6

wow...in a shocking devlopment I failed to update regularly. Even more shocking I've been sticking with this. Ok sure, I haven't been using the computer lab, and I've definitley walked with my phone more than once. But I haven't used the social medias on the list all week. I've gotten more comfortable with silence, though when I'm in the library working on a coding project I really, really want tunes. Honestly, my screen time hasn't gone down very much - I've spent a lot more time on neocities, looked around substalk. Done more crosswords. I've also gotten bored enough to read, sketch, pick up animal crossing. I've journaled everyday, it's a good time. Tonight I wanted background noise so I went to a friend's dorm the chat and ended up not working at all because we watched the Minions movie.

Other interesting note is that when I've wanted to watch a show, or a video, or a fic, I'm much more chill about saving it for later. I really want to rewatch Barry, but once I get the thought, I shelf it. It makes me feel a little more in control of what I'm doing. See you tomorrow for day 7!

Day 7!

okay last day. Spent so much time on the internet today. This is what I do when I'm stressed/sad, which raises the concern that I may need more "coping mechanisms". But even when I'm reading a bunch of Severance reviews becaause I can't watch severance, it's still easier to break out of. It feels like I really haven't accomplished much, but this is actually big for me! I didn't think I was going to be able to stick to the main two points of this - no socials and no headphones, but I did! I think the design of this worked, no limits on screentime, just limits on certain sites. And getting into silence felt good, even if it is still, sometimes, terribly boring. That's good thing. If you want to try something like this, I'd say go for it. You might surprise yourself. I used SelfControl (Mac, no easy workaround for blocked sites) and ScreenZen. I put up a giant "GO AWAY" banner whenever I tried to open a restricted site. Make it fun.

https://www.tumblr.com/idontmindifuforgetme/770114641396416512/most-anti-phone-advice-is-so-inane-and

12/29/25: been thinking about this a lot. I've had so much trouble trying to get my self offline that I'm now trying to find hobbies. Coding, again, and also puzzles. Would like to learn how to Crochet. I need to be building with my hands - I miss carprentry but that's hard to pick back up without shop access.

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