Two Reasons I Stopped Writing
I wrote regularly for two years on Medium, from November 2018 to 2020. Last fall, 8 months into the plague, I took a hiatus.
The reason I gave to people was that I was tired of screens. I wanted to be present in the real world and remove as many of my voluntary screen commitments as possible. I was recognizing how insane it is that we spend so much time on these evolutionarily new devices in digital spaces. I had–up to that point–embraced the influx of technology. iPhone, smart watch, IG, Netflix, Google, Google, Google.
One day I was scrolling through Twitter and I saw a biting tweet about racial justice that had a couple million likes, retweets and thousands of responses. Engagement at its best. But the disturbing part was the image that followed in my mind. Millions of people sounding incredibly riled up… with their heads bent, faces glowing over their phones. It’s an image that I still can’t shake. We’ve let ourselves think that we’re contributing meaningfully in this virtual landscape through a clapback, checking out of the elaborate, tactile landscapes we inhabit.
Inspired by this powerful insight, I attempted to extract myself from any artificial participation in life. I wanted to see how it felt to live for a while without social media as an escape or habit. I wanted to see what happened when I focused on my immediate physical (and metaphysical) environment. What was I (and by extension, we) missing by neglecting the living, breathing, evolving world? What was actually happening?
It was an awakening of sorts, from the sleep-like state of ‘keeping up’ with culture to suddenly being uninterrupted, undistracted and off the beaten path. I stopped immediately searching the internet for answers, and tried to find them within or through conversation. I experienced boredom, and the quieter insights that arise of their own accord. Layers peeled away, not always pleasurable, but increasingly giving me the sense that real life is both simple yet incredibly profound. There’s a lot to learn here.
Screens, and the digital distraction they provide, gave way to a confrontation with my own flaws and creativity and ignorance. I think this was what my subconscious wanted me to notice in my hiatus. Addressing this mess is no small task, but I’m working on it.
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However, as my title gives away, this was only one of the reasons I stopped writing publicly over the past 4 months. The other is that my ideas began diverging more and more strikingly from official and accepted narratives, as well as my own former beliefs. I was hesitant to say out loud what I genuinely felt to be true and face backlash from my friends, neighbors and the world.
I needed some time to sit with this new reality of having unpopular opinions. That isn’t territory I seek out, I’ve never been particularly motivated by controversy. But I couldn’t continue to believe things that so clearly went against my own lived experience or building research. Many of the hallmarks of 2020 are intertwined– health, equality, justice, policy– and changing my mind about one thing initiated a domino effect. I was inspired by Byron Katie’s process of The Work, and began approaching everything, even common assumptions, especially common assumptions, with the simple, profound question of “Is it true?”.
Regarding our global public health emergency, many seemingly basic questions formed in my mind:
What is health? How is it cultivated? What is disease?
Is it true that viruses cause disease? What is a virus? How do we know?
Where are these tests? What do the tests test for? What does this data reveal to us? How is the data being compiled and presented? Is it trustworthy? How do we know?
I don’t have a science background or a data background, but I’ve survived on this planet for 36 years. In the last three, I managed to drop a substantial drinking habit, truly prioritize my health, and get into the best shape of my life. My body gave me much of this guidance, through slowly revealed insight and observation, and I had started to trust my own experience in a new way.
I began to question some covenants I didn’t even realize I had agreed to. Perhaps I didn’t have an electron microscope or microbiology degree, but I recognized that I could at least understand how a theory is tested and supported. I could assess for myself the quality of experiments and evidence, rather than taking a headline or sound bite as gospel. I started to give my mind the chance to reconsider… well, everything.
I found myself stumbling into new mindsets about the racial and gender assumptions that critical race theory and feminism have made mainstream in my social circles over the past decade. The claims began to sound oversimplified, hypocritical or untrue to me. Untrue and ineffective, in their now dominant form. Was the racial inequity narrative bringing people together for genuine conversations? It looked more chaotic than ever out there. And my own– often excruciating– single status glared at me more uneasily than the self-evidence of gender inequality. Most people I know who believe these things are not in cherished significant relationships. In the last few years in my day job, I have learned to prioritize effective outcomes over what “should” happen. Why was I still living in a “should” in this vital aspect of my personal life?
It’s not easy, of course. And the point is not perfection. But I recognized a clear lack of integrity and tendency to accept things without reflection, experimentation and due diligence. That process is lazy and dangerous, and I was beginning to see totalitarian and tyrannical phenomenon in the world. I hoped I could work on improving my thinking abilities, and in that pursuit, bring some much-needed clarity into the fore, at least in my own life.
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I’ve spent the last year having my mind reoriented over and over through this newly invigorated attempt to understand both the fundamental truths and dazzling mysteries of life. I’ve studied the history of cytology and theories of disease. I have read difficult books and listened to hundreds of hours of interviews and talks about nutrition, immunology, epistemology, pharmaceuticals, propaganda, evolutionary biology, various ideologies and the nature of water. I’ve talked to people and thought, reflected, and wrote privately.
And I’ve begun– slowly, clumsily– building new, better frameworks for my own existence. Not just intellectual, but also building my spiritual capacity and strengthening my connection with life force.
I’ve come to a point where I want to start sharing my thoughts publicly again. I’ve become more acquainted with my evolving mind, I’ve stumbled through the initial fear and awkwardness of learning new skills. I am certainly not done making mistakes or being wrong, but it’s time to take more seriously my commitment to speaking honestly with courage and conviction.
I hope this undertaking with help me clarify my aim and connect with others who are similarly volunteering for this challenge. It’s not the easy way but I know it will be worth it.
Thank you for witnessing the beginnings of this new space for my ideas. I hope it is fruitful for you.
With love.
