Good morning! Last week’s dispatch had some great motivational clips you needed to hear! If you missed it, give them a listen. They’re awesome and worthy of your consideration for the journey you’re on. This week, we’re thinking about how much time (and energy) we’ve given to fleeting experiences in the black box we carry around, instead of giving time to building real connections and real things in the real world.
The push: Meditations on the Smartphone
“Put it aside. The mathematics of existence cannot be outsmarted.
Let the silence arrive—not as punishment but as necessity. Let the darkness envelop you, not to confront some terrible void but to simply rest within it. Your thoughts, untethered from external stimuli, will wander where they must. They have always belonged to you, these thoughts, though the modern condition teaches us to flee from their company.” - Meditations for Phone Addicts, 2.27.25
Thoughts
This entire piece, a little long yet easy to read/follow, was eye opening. It caused me to examine my screentime habits. My routines. And I came to a few conclusions on new meditations that I put into place. At least for me, as I grasp at the remains of my existence, and the desire to be one with the currents of life. A smartphone has less, and less to do with that desire to be in tune with the frequencies of life.
Observations | Screen addiction
Antidotely, as a New Yorker who walks the city, I can tell you this. It is getting worse. You see more people looking down at their phones more than ever before. They do it while walking. They do it while driving! You can be on a subway car and see nearly 90% of the people on it hunched over, staring darts into a black bo in their hand. The one person on the train car not on their phone will lock eyes with me sometimes, and for a split second, we’re engaging in real life while 90% of the humans we are sharing a car with are engaged in a virtual one.
It’s dawned on me recently, you know what people hunched over on their phones look like?
If you live in America, then you know what it is. The fentanyl crisis is so prevalent, quietly discussed (yet not really), the rampant drug use that plagues much of the country. It’s not some “big city thing” either, it’s an entire country type of thing. If you are paying attention, you have either driven or walked by a scene that looks like that photo above. Everyone on their screens resembles the same hunched over-checked out vibe.
I was at a Bar Mitzvah this past weekend. A table of pre-teenage boys and all had phones and had them out on the table. They decided to pull them out when the boy being celebrated was giving his speech in the Synagogue. They also had them on their tables while they were eating with each other. Thinking they’re really in the room with each other. Thinking they’re really communicating. Or perhaps they’re not even thinking about it at all? But the reality is this, they are living in a pseudo-reality in those moments. They’re both online and offline at the same time. When I ask parents what is going on, they sigh and shrug, what are we going to do? They’re everywhere, and they want it. To which I think, lol what is even happening?
P.S. Teachers / Parents are starting to go on and on about how students can’t even hold enough attention to read anymore. They. Can’t. Hold. Attention. To. Read. Think about that.
P.P.S. There’s a class to teach kids in colleges how to speak on the phone because “Gen Z is afraid of talking on the phone”. They. Can’t. Get. Onto. A. Phone. Call.
Hey, I’m no Saint
Here’s how my week goes. I go to work. I spend hours on that computer screen having meetings, writing emails, filling in notes, creating documents, contracts, and the like. It jacks my brain up so much that I go to my smartphone. Sometimes there are messages there. But oftentimes, I am looking for something to pick at. Not because it’s going to fulfill anything for me. Not because it’s going to cause some magic to happen in my (real) life. No, just because it feels good to pick at the screen. What am I doing? What are we even doing?
A new challenge
Look. I know there’s no way of escaping this screen in a society that organizes itself around technology, capitalism, and entertainment. But, I also know that I’ve lost so much of my life to letting it dominate my attention. To let it “hack my brain.” And I am starting to realize, the view, the vibes, and my own personal flow will likely be better the less time I spend staring at a screen.
For me, for now, less screen time has become a weekend thing. Between the management of my work life and my own life, there is simply no way to get away from the screen but on the weekends we can turn it down a notch.
On Saturday and Sunday, I can go to my journal and pen before I go to the phone. I can leave it in the bedroom while I am with my family. Or better yet, I can even dare to leave it behind at home as I go to take a walk in the park.
That stillness. That weight of life. That’s life. Dostoevsky‘s blog / Meditations on the Phone shook me up. Maybe not all the time. But some of the time. I can get back to what it used to mean, to just be on this planet, and be with my own brain floating within space and time.
Running journal: Building towards a half-marathon.
Fun Fact: This domination of tech and screens over our lives coincides with the rise of running as a sport. I am in the middle of a build towards a Half-Marathon at the end of April. It’s been a good training cycle. I have spent more time in the weight room compared to builds in the past. There have been good speed/threshold training sessions. The mileage has been 40+ over the past three weeks.
But it looks like I’ve made my right ankle really mad. Now I am in a mode of resting and hoping I don’t lose too much training time before I can pick. The commitment has been worth it though, last Sunday I decided to run 7 miles at a half-marathon pace. This is a speed where I want to have a little giddyup, but I also can’t burn out, it needs to be consistent so I can last at that time for most of the race. It boggles my mind, but I am putting in 6:35 - 6:50 miles right now. The average mile pace for the total 10 miler was 6:54. 👀 It’s been a really good training cycle. We’ll see how it plays out on race day in a few weeks.
A good idea to consider (and in times like these): Be the first 🤗
Visuals of the week
Go forth.
Stay safe.
Ride the wave.
-Mitch