I Took A Two Month Web Detox
By: Priscilla Monroe
Tags: San Francisco, Elections, Detox, Minimalism

Despite devouring election coverage for the last year, November 3rd came and went up here and I barely thought about it, aside from hoping my friends and family were safe. My first week was spent coming up with a routine that filled the day and still followed ’The Rules’ I had set for myself.

It’s not enough to just hide away from the rest of the world; as an introvert I mostly did that already. I was already committed to being disconnected from the web, but change requires forming new habits, and sometimes unlearning old ones. With that in mind I condensed my remaining goals down to three guidelines:

No Screens after 7PM (except my e-Reader, with the backlight off)

After years of graveyard shifts five nights a week and decades of staring at a PC or phone screen, I wanted to try to limit my blue light exposure and get my circadian rhythms back on track.

After the first week following this I was falling asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow around 10pm-ish.

Two hour a day limit for video entertainment

Here, I welcome being bored and uncomfortable; a great motivator for learning new things and sticking with new habits. But I’m also not a monk, and I don’t think I’m ready to sit around gazing at my navel all day. So, before dinner, I sometimes watch an episode or two of ‘The Munsters’ or ‘Gilligan’s Island’ or some other old show or movie.

Since I use my laptop strictly for writing or studying, the files are all loaded onto the iPod. The two inch scratched-to-Hell screen provides a very unsatisfactory viewing experience, by design. (As a side note, it’s also loaded up with video tutorials on various subjects I want to work on.)

Finally, this leads into probably my most important rule:

Limit multitasking and No “Channel Surfing”

I try to focus on one thing at a time, fully and mindfully, like exercising without music, enjoying a meal without reading, or taking a walk without drowning out the natural world with podcasts or audiobooks.

For my modern equivalent of channel surfing, it used to be that I would sometimes be watching or reading five or six different things in bits and pieces, skipping between them constantly as I got bored- something a shortened attention span, tabbed browsing and a near infinite entertainment library encouraged.

It’s no wonder that I eventually discovered I had difficulty focusing.

Now, if a book or show is such a bore that I can’t power through it, it gets deleted. If I start watching something during my video entertainment time, I either finish it or forgo the rest of my two hours that day.

For books, I have to completely finish one, or delete it, before moving on to another. (I do allow myself two books at a time; a fiction & non-fiction, but no flipping back and forth between them. I usually read non-fiction during the day and save the novels for the evening hours.)

So, having clarified all that, my typical daily routine here goes something like this:

I usually naturally awaken right as the sun starts lightening the sky. I haven’t set an alarm in months, not that I would need to as the (many) roosters wandering around never fail to enthusiastically greet the new day.

The first thing I used to do back home was grab my phone and lazily scroll through my missed messages and Facebook, and skim the world’s latest atrocities. Now, I make a few notes in my dream journal and let my mind drift until the dawn brightens the room enough to get the blood moving.

I start with a bit of stretching and Yoga, and then do some isometric exercises before jumping jacks for awhile. If I have to go to town to resupply though, I skip exercising and leave early. It’s a few hour roundtrip hike through the jungle, and fairly demanding, physically. I also want to ensure there’s plenty of daylight- the path is well-worn, but I would not attempt it in the dark.

With exercising or town runs finished, I take a cold shower and the rest of the day still stretches out before me. Usually I’ll read a few chapters of a non-fiction book (mostly philosophy, these days), and then I’ll contemplate what I read while walking around the vast property.

I’ll spend some time meditating on the rocks by the river before I head back home, stopping along the way to examine interesting bugs or lizards or flowers.

I did bring a travel-sized guitar up here hoping to learn, so I try to spend a couple of hours a day practicing, watching some video tutorials on the iPod for reference. Weeks later and I’m still terrible, but learning something new and difficult feels good.

I’ll then do a bit of writing, or some freeform study: work on my Spanish, brush up on math skills, practice some programming, poke around Linux and read some of the man(ual)s, etc. Throughout the day I’ll also update my personal journal. It’s my goal to at least make one entry daily, but I’ve found I’ve been jotting down something every few waking hours.

I space out a lot, like I do on long car or plane trips. I’ll just stare at a wall or out the window, sometimes for hours, while musing about this or that or nothing at all. Occasionally, I’ll nod off and nap.

As the afternoon wanes I’ll break out my current choice of fiction and read into the evening. Sometimes I’ll watch something during my video entertainment time, or I’ll skip it and keep reading, as I’ve been doing more frequently as of late; in the last six weeks I’ve finished over a dozen novels.

After night falls I’ll get started on dinner, being very careful with the food prep- during the third week a mishap led to scalding myself with boiling water. Luckily, it turned out to be a very minor injury. But with medical attention at least an hours walk away, I always remind myself that a slip of the knife, or a skid and a fall, could very well be…inconvenient.

Dinner is the only meal I’ve been having lately, to stretch my rations and limit the stress and exposure of town visits. The dishes are simple; every night is usually beans and rice with some fats and protein, and sometimes a banana.

I don’t go out after dark- too many mosquitoes and it’s pitch black anyway. So I space out some more, practice the guitar, or curl up and read until I drift off around 10 or so. And then I’ll do it all over again the next day, as I’ve done the last seven weeks or so.

It all feels kind of what I imagine a modern Zen-ish lifestyle to be like…in the very artificial way of a Westerner with money in a foreign land, that has the privilege of being able to drop off the map like this, and who doesn’t even really know what ‘Zen’ means.

This is my last couple of weeks up here, and already the realities of the world are starting to intrude on my thoughts. Soon I must move on, so I find myself wondering about the state of my country, and the world at large I walked away from. In some ways, two months isn’t that long at all, but 2020 has taught me that a lot can happen in 60 days.

I will hike down the mountain one last time and leave this place behind. In town, I’ll meet my ride back to Santo Domingo and turn my phone back on, where I fully expect to be bombarded with hundreds of missed notifications from the last couple of months.

My journey up here has been about preparing myself to mindfully use the tools of the modern world, rather than be exploited by them. So I’ll upload this article, skim through the basics of what I missed, and try not to get sucked back into the Feed; I’d like to think I’m disciplined enough, now.

This mountain has been tranquil. I’d like the next place to be as well, but that’s a lot to ask of the world. Hopefully, I’ve learned a little bit on how to maintain and carry the peace within me.

Maybe it’s the isolation talking, but I feel like I should start to get more socially involved, perhaps with activism or volunteering- but I do want to make the time to spend with family first.

Priscilla, mid-Dec 2020