…but I’m back and want to hear everything.
Hey…
I know I should’ve told you I was vanishing for a short while, but honestly, I didn’t plan it. One day I just looked at my screen and felt this overwhelming urge to throw my computer into the nearest body of water.
So I did the next best thing.
I went completely offline for three weeks.
No social media. No email. No content creation. No endless scrolling through other people’s thoughts about other people’s thoughts. Just me, some books, a lot of staring at walls, and the increasingly foreign concept of being genuinely bored. Oh and a metric shit tonne of caffeine.
It was exactly what I didn’t know I needed funnily enough.
The first few days are brutal. Your brain keeps reaching for that dopamine hit that comes from notifications, likes, comments, the constant stream of external validation that we’ve all become addicted to without realising it.
Then something interesting happens around day four or five. The mental chatter starts to settle. You stop thinking in tweet sized chunks. Your attention span remembers how to focus on one thing for longer than thirty seconds. You start having thoughts that haven’t been influenced by whatever controversy is trending this week. (god damn rage baiters, uninstalling the twitter app off my phone was honestly one of the best things.)
By week two, I was actually thinking original thoughts again instead of just reacting to other people’s content. I was asking myself questions I’d been too distracted to ask: What do I actually want to create? What problems am I genuinely passionate about solving? (yes I used the word passionate. BITE ME) What would I write about if I wasn’t trying to optimise for engagement?
The boredom was a crucial step. We’ve become so afraid of being unstimulated that we never give our brains the space to wander, to make unexpected connections, to stumble across ideas that only emerge in the quiet moments between clacking away on the keyboard or at our phones.
I sat with that boredom until it turned into clarity. And while it was difficult to figure out. Lots of false starts, circular thinking, and moments of “what the hell am I even doing with my life”, the little hiatus was completely worth it.
I came back with a clearer sense of direction, renewed energy which is wild cause I generally have so much energy anyways, and a much healthier relationship with the online world that had been slowly consuming my mental bandwidth.
But with all that being said. Thank you to everyone who emailed and checked in to see if I was still alive. Seriously, it means more than you know. Getting those “where the hell did you go?” messages reminded me that there are real humans on the other side of this screen, people who actually give a shit about more than just consuming content.
Now I want to hear from you. While I was off having my detox revelation, you were all living your actual lives, and I’m genuinely curious…
Did you survive without me? (lol, but also genuinely, did you miss these emails or were you secretly relieved to have one less thing in your inbox?)
What wins did you have? Big or small, I want to hear about the things that went right. The projects you finished, the conversations that mattered, the moments when you felt like you were actually getting somewhere.
What shit punched you in the face? What kicked your ass? What problems are you wrestling with? What’s keeping you up at night or making you question everything?
Have you watched or read anything new and interesting? I’m always looking for recommendations, especially for things that make you think differently or see the world from a new angle. I did manage to binge Mayor of Kingstown and man, that was mental.
Hit reply and tell me what I missed. As always. I reply to everyone I can. One of the benefits of taking a break is remembering that conversations are more valuable than constantly blasting stuff out into the internet.
Good to be back.
Stephen Walker.
P.S. All will slowly be revealed in time.
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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom