Offline

It’s hard to be unavailable these days. You can’t even get on a long-haul flight anymore without being offered an in-flight messaging plan. Until July, the last time I’d been truly offline was on an eight day trek up Mount Kilimanjaro. It’s a bit of an extreme way to get off the grid and, even then, those with local SIM cards could get signal here or there, if they wanted to.

Sometimes, I’m longing for an out-of-office sign to hang on my entire life. Not currently available for messages, questions, or comments. Only reachable in an emergency. (An actual emergency.) But making that a reality is something I find more challenging than ever.

Rural Finland used to be the place I could truly disconnect. Pre-smartphones and data plans with EU roaming, I could safely go to Finland for two or three weeks and not read a single email. Not receive even one text message. But in a world insistent to make sure I am reachable wherever I go, switching off has become harder than ever.

Because now, unhindered by the simple practicality of phone signal (or lack thereof) it ends up coming down to my own willpower. Can I actually turn my phone off or put it in a drawer, and just choose not to look at it?

The answer is, sort of. The day we arrive, I’m ready for it. I turn off my phone and stuff it to the back of the shelf, under a pile of clean underwear. It can’t ping, ring, or buzz. It’s out of sight and out of mind. I turn my attention instead to the peace and quiet of the lakeside. The gentle sigh of the breeze dancing through the birch trees and the chirp of the swallows as they swoop in to feed their young in the nest.

It takes a few days, but then it comes. A knot in my chest begins to unwind. A pressure on my head starts to ease off. I stop worrying about what email I might be missing or voice note I haven’t listened to. Whose holiday snaps I won’t see or the latest podcast episode I’ll be a few weeks behind on. All these things that don’t matter, not really.

Except, then, a problem. The young birds poke their head out of the nest and I want to take a photo. And I don’t carry a digital camera anymore that’s not my phone. Alright, I think, just for a second.

I turn my phone on. My data is off. No messages. I’m safe. I take some pictures and go to put my phone away again. But there’s a voice niggling at the back of my head. A reminder that I’m waiting to hear back about a job.

Just for a second.

I turn on my data and get hit my a barrage of messages and emails. Most of them aren’t important – they’re nothing I have to see now. I find the one I’m looking for. The rest can wait.

But the little red bubbles are irritating me and I want to clear them away. So I read them all. And I put my phone away again. But it’s too late. Because now it’s back in my head, and all I can think about is the next reply that might come.

It’s horribly ironic, really, that I’m more incapable of disconnecting than ever, despite being more aware than ever of the detrimental effect this little metal box is having over my mind and my life. I know all the reasons why I should disconnect. Why I want to.

There’s a reason why I enjoy unique, immersive experiences so much. Why I love to travel and explore new places. Why I take myself to the cinema alone at least once a week. These are all avenues through which I get to disconnect; moments where my phone is not my primary focus, because there is so much else to see or engage with.

The irony of having to take this photo on my phone is not lost on me.

And there’s so much more I can see when I take the time to do so without my phone as a crutch. I run through the forest track in Finland and hear the birds, and the chatter of the children at the next cottage over. I startle a deer from a drinking hole and get to watch the whole display of it elegantly rising out of the undergrowth and out into the field, because my attention was already on the soft rustle rising from the grasses. I hear the heavy pad of paws crushing the forest floor coming from somewhere behind me and revel in having heard what was most likely a bear tiptoeing past. I never would have noticed, if I’d had headphones in to accompany my running route.

I become accustomed to – and, dare I say it, good at – spending time doing nothing. I can perch on the end of the jetty and stare at the water and just let my mind turn over the various things playing out within it. I can sit with my family, not really engaging, but just being in their presence, as time passes by in quiet contentment.

I want to feel like this more often. At peace in myself and with the world. But the world isn’t built for me to be like this.

At peace with myself, I can think clearer and write better.

The feeling I get when I return it is an even more potent reminder. I log back into social media on the station platform ahead of my train – the one thing I have managed to stay off for the past three weeks, by virtue of just logging off. Once or twice, I tried to open them, and faced with the login page, promptly gave up again. 

I catch up on messages and then scroll absentmindedly for maybe no more than 10 minutes. By the end of those 10 minutes, I feel worse about myself than I did 10 minutes earlier.

I feel worse about my friendships, my financial status, my (lack of a) love life, and my career. About humanity. About the state of the world.

I close it again and wonder what to do with myself until my train arrives. Because, once again and within the space of just 20 or 30 minutes, I’ve become dependent on my phone to fill any spare moment. 

I don’t have a solution. Not when my work is powered by emails, my writing by what content I can put online, and my primarily long-distance friendships by WhatsApp. But if all I can do is find those moments where I can really switch off and take them, then I will continue to do so. Because, as it turns out, life feels a whole lot easier outside of the digital network. 

Suzey IngoldComment