A week without distraction didn’t teach me what I thought it would
“The Artist’s Way” Week 4 is not for the faint of heart
I started “The Artist’s Way” in January after several false starts that spanned two decades. This time, I gathered a group of people so we could hold each other accountable and I could get to the end of this book. Beyond reading, it involves daily writing, weekly solo outings, and creative exercises that correlate to the reading.
I was not expecting the task laid out in Week 4.
A week of reading deprivation.
I already had some grudges with this book (Julia Cameron elicits so many eye rolls), but this is the first time I found myself complaining out loud—to myself and and anyone who would listen—about “Julia” (as if I knew her) and what she was trying to get me to do.
I understand not being online all day but to not read actual books? In 2026, that’s a radical idea.
Also, I am an editor. I literally get paid to read every day.
My plan was to read while working my day job (emails, stories, news wires and so on), but I would keep my phone silenced, turn off notifications for everything except phone calls and texts, not use the internet outside of working hours, and not read any books. No Youtube videos, no podcasts, no scrolling, no streaming a TV show or movie, no emails or outgoing texts or messages. I would check my email once in the morning and once in the evening. Because I consider posting on social media part of my creative process, I continued to do this but didn’t scroll while there—posted and ghosted.
Here’s what happened.
•••
SILENCE GOT LOUD
Sometimes the silence was deafening.
I thought I was someone who’d not only grown accustomed to silence but preferred it—long stretches of it—the longer the better.
I was already someone who doesn’t sleep next to my phone, often has it silenced, and doesn’t do much social media scrolling.
And yet, I didn’t realize how much of my day is filled with things that are mentally stimulating—or, frankly, distractions. Unless I have music playing, I usually look for a podcast or a Youtube video to put on while I cook lunch—stuff like that.
Like your life becomes a constant feed without you realizing.
I also didn’t realize how often I reach for my phone just to check it. All this time, I thought I did not have a phone addiction, not the way it was described to me by people struggling with it (are there AA groups for screentime yet?). I thought I was special. I am not. I habitually reached for my phone the first couple days like an addict, even when I had all my notifications turned off!
I needed music. I learned that quickly.
•••
ANXIETY CREPT IN SWIFTLY—AND QUICK
I was only halfway through day 1 and was already jonesing.
I suddenly had this slight unease, and not necessarily that I was going to miss an important call or text but more like a generalized anxious feeling that something big was missing (all the noise). It made me wonder how much these constant distractions in a day are gently soothing my anxiety without me realizing.
On day 1, I also felt genuine fear—which sounds crazy. I grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Going a day without the internet should not be hard. In fact, isn’t this the very thing everyone says they’re craving? Time in the real world, unplugged, unreachable, peace!
But I have spent years slowly building up the amount of time I spend behind a screen. Even though I think of myself as someone who would rather be out in the woods or on the road or swimming in the ocean, I am often behind a screen! And the clutter and chaos of the World Wide Web has infiltrated my life.
•••
WHERE MY MIND WANDERED
During my years alone in the desert (that always sounds biblical to me), I often wondered if I would’ve stayed there had I found myself in that unique situation—having moved across the country three months before a global pandemic—in the ‘90s. Would I stay if I were getting all my news updates through local papers, communicating via AOL Instant Messenger with the few friends who used it and randos met in AOL chatrooms, relying on long-distance landline calls that would quickly add up in fees, relying on letters sent through USPS.
No texts, no FaceTime, no social media, no Netflix or Youtube … no news online, not even sound bites.
Would the social isolation have driven me mad? Would I have packed up and driven back East, where friends and family were saying “come back!” and “you can stay with me!”
Or would I have grown closer to the few people I’d met in my first months in New Mexico, latching onto them like they were my lifeblood? Would I have gotten to know more of my neighbors as we were careful to not breathe on one another?
When people seemed worried or questioned my staying out there alone, I always explained how easy technology made it. I still felt connected to everyone, 2,000 miles away.
•••
DO I REMEMBER HOW TO DECOMPRESS WITHOUT A SCREEN?
Sitting down and doing nothing for an hour did not have the same effect as watching YouTube or reading for an hour like I normally do after dinner to turn off my brain and decompress. An external focus helps immensely (specifically in the winter, when I don’t take a walk after dinner). Eventually I get my second wind. Without this break, I felt a little amiss. I knew it was bad when I asked someone to scroll and narrate their feed over the phone.
•••
IN THE END
I thought by essentially turning off all outside influence, I would enter a quiet, meditative space this week. Instead—and especially because I spent the week alone and it was too cold to be outside much—I felt misaligned.
I reached two conclusions.
1. I need mental stimulation for my mental health. I know too much scrolling social media will leave me feeling bad—physically and mentally—but no interaction with the internet felt almost just as bad. I need a balance of input / output. I’d never clocked it until I went without it, but that 90-120 minutes I spend decompressing after dinner is really integral to my emotional wellbeing. I typically do some combination of listening to a talk on Youtube, reading a book, talking on the phone, or scrolling. Once I feel the break from my day brain, I usually enter another round of something in the evening—whether housework or playing music or editing a video. But without that buffer, I just kind of drifted aimlessly through the hours, not sure what to do with myself when I was too mentally exhausted to keep going without a break (and it was too cold/dark to go for a walk by that point in the day).
2. Conversation, reading—mental stimulation in general—is such a huge part of my creative process. I think I am a collage artist at heart but in its broadest sense. Even my editing work is taking something that already exists and sculpting it into something new. It’s what I do best and enjoy most. And a necessary component of this process is GATHERING LIFE’S STUFF—from walks, conversations, podcasts, TV shows, visual art, books, the internet. Mercury is my chart ruler.
I’m not intimidated by a blank page, but I’m more excited by heaping raw material that can be transformed—mining it for gems, discarding the rest; seeing shards of color in a pile of scraps that I must combine into a collage or article of clothing (I actually feel this impulse in my body when looking at piles of anything). What can be extracted and reconstrued, contextualized in a new way, seen again, anew, transmuted so as if to see for the first time?
So if nothing else, I learned these things about myself.
I am reading this finally this morning and hits my gut. Had my art show this weekend and it was a wild ride. Thank you for always being honest and real my friend. Deep bow.
Wow!