My Screen-Free Day: the Annoying, the FOMO, the Lovely, and the Gobsmacked

Twice a month I run Screen-Free Sunday Challenges. I try to do at least one of these myself per month, in addition to the regular (and increasing) boundaries I set on my digital consumption. 

But! October’s challenge fell on a day that I had a podcast interview, so I did it on Saturday instead. Here’s what happened: 

I usually try to do a 36-hour block vs 24-hour, so phone and screens away 7pm Saturday night, and then back on 7am Monday morning. But this time, I had some business to take care of on Saturday morning, so I pushed it till…11am Saturday, which meant that I would go till 11am on Sunday. 

As I advise everyone else to do, I had plenty of activities lined up: a couple wee house projects, a new book, a hike. 

Saturday morning I went to yoga, to the farmers market, and squeezed in a few last calls to my mom and texts to others before I went dark. 

Admittedly, the minute I turned off my phone, I felt quite glum and anxious. 24 HOURS?!! This is going to be an ETERNITY. Why do I run this stupid challenge anyway, and WHY don’t I at least allow music, podcasts, etc?! Then you aren’t even looking at screens, just listening. Ugh. 

But, the feeling faded as I got used to just being in my own body and head again. I used this time to read through the voter’s pamphlet and vote, but then I realized that I needed to look up some stuff, so I had to put that aside till the next day (annoying). 

It was raining and after wandering around my house for a while, I finally decided to snuggle up on the couch with a new book (Women Without Kids by Ruby Warrington - HIGHLY RECOMMEND). And, just like back to the old days, I relaxed, and lounged; had tea and read half of a book (lovely).

But then, getting REALLY excited about this writer, I wanted to look her up, immediately follow her on Instagram, see what else she wrote (Sober Curious, by the way), and see if my local library had it so I could put it on hold, like ASAP. But I couldn’t do any of that (annoying and some FOMO). 

So, I just made a mental note to do it the next day. If I was worried that I would forget, I could have written it down in my Full Focus Planner… another great place to spend time on a screen-less day. 

Cooking dinner was pretty quiet, as there was no podcast, audiobook, or streaming on in the background. So, I just cooked and sorted out thoughts from the day, and then read a bit more. 

Then I tidied up, and got ready for the next day. I mean, REALLY ready. I laid out clothes, I soaked the oats, I put out the cups and supplements for morning vitamins, I planned my meals. Then I went to bed early and read. (This is pretty much my normal routine so not much different here.) 

I woke up reeeeallly early at 3am, a bit earlier than I wanted to and not ideal, but I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I got out of bed at 4am. Since I try to not be on my phone till 7am, and almost never get on social media until at least that time, not getting on social media upon waking wasn’t hard, it was normal. 

BUT. I had my podcast interview at 11:30am, and there were all kinds of other things on my daily roster that I was absolutely itching to do. Reconcile my budget! Check my PodMatch messages! All my email accounts! 

Then I convinced myself that it was daylight savings time and I was going to miss my interview, so I looked at my phone’s screen (in Do Not Disturb mode, so black screen, not very exciting, and I felt a little better, perhaps it was the following week but was still worried). All of this fell somewhere between annoying and nearly unbearable, as being off of screens that long can convince you that you’re missing some extremely important shit going down elsewhere. (Obviously, mega FOMO.)

Partially because of this itching to be on screens, I got my hiking stuff together and was out on the trail by 6:15am. It was still pitch black and very cold. But the way up was glittering with all the frost, the morning was almost completely silent, and I just focused on my steps and breathing, and again, made space to sort through all the thoughts that normally bounce around my head completely unacknowledged at best, or pushed away and distracted against at worst. 

As I had hoped, my near-ascent timed with the sunrise and HOLY SHIT, it was beautiful. I mean, gobsmackingly beautiful. I mean, so beautiful that I cried in earnest, for a good while, as I kept climbing - crying for its beauty, for the wildness and surety of the plants around me bathed in that rare reddish-pinkish fall light, for the fact that I won’t always get to climb up mountains to see sunrises; for all those who can’t, or can’t anymore; that I am probably not going to have kids, almost certainly not from my own body; that the world feels really fucked-up and scary right now and so many people are suffering, but that there will always be people who fight for one another, and justice and good; that I want to build something incredible but don’t quite know what it is yet, but feel the yearning for it all the same; for how strongly I feel about community and how desperately I think people need it but are in fact getting father apart; that there are people who I love dearly who are aging; that we are all aging and are going to die someday and the sheer existential terror of that most unknown of all the unknowns. 

Now, this might sound not-that-fun. Admittedly, I wouldn’t call it fun either. But it was incredible, cathartic, necessary; honestly, a little bit transcendental. To feel connected to nature, to process, to remember - to reclaim my own brain in order to help me understand and befriend what the hell is going on inside my life, rather than consuming what the hell is going on in other people’s (often fictional people’s) lives. 

And, important point here: NONE of this would have happened had I done the hike, but as I normally would have - listening to a podcast on the way up, and taking photos of the sunrise. Both fine activities, and obviously, I would have still noticed the sunrise, but I would not have created the spaciousness needed in my brain in the lead up, and the distraction of the podcast and picture-taking would have almost certainly have precluded an experience like the one I had.  

Then I got home and it started to feel like I was waiting out the clock till 11am. I got REAL antsy. Surely something had happened while I was off screens - an emergency, what if my mom wasn’t ok but for some reason the break-through call mechanism wasn’t working? What if it really was daylight saving time and the podcast host was waiting and then gave up on me and I got a bad review for not showing up? 

11am fiiiiinalllly arrived; I jumped on my phone, and computer, and…. Nothing. I mean sure, I had had texts and emails come in, but nothing urgent… not by a long shot. I called my mom, she was fine. 

At 11:30am, my podcast hosts and I joined up on the recording platform; business as usual, nothing awry, excited but calm, and we had a great time. 

I wish I could share now that I spent the rest of the day off screens. That I used that magical sunrise experience and the screen-free momentum and leaned into all of that wonder, spaciousness, stark beauty, or at least pragmatic house projects that had marked my previous 24 hours. 

But, no. I had lunch and dove back into some fictional Netflix drama, essentially about people doing their stressful high-level jobs and dealing with the normal ho-hummery of being human, while asking themselves the very same existential questions. 

I had almost giddily looked forward to ‘treating myself’ to a little downtime with these made-up people, and indeed I believe that there is space for that in our lives.

But instead of it being consumed like a treat (aka a limited quantity to be consciously enjoyed), I frittered the rest of the day away consuming digital content, and went to bed feeling soul-tired, a bit sad, and like I had missed an opportunity of some kind. 

Thank god, today is a new day and we get to decide all over again… what kind of day do we want to have? 

I don’t think I need to do another complete 24 hours off screens till next month, but how could I reduce my screen time consumption such to just make a little more space for ALL of these other experiences that exist in life? To either inch my life toward the better, deeper, more meaningful, and/or move the world in this direction? 

And, I have the same questions for you.