D'Écriture - Sal Christ

The Art of Disconnect…

…or why I have neglected the old blog here for the last two months and quit Twitter.

Back in January, Arianna Huffington was interviewed by Prospect Magazine and made a comment about the need “to disengage from our 24/7 connectivity.” She went on to explain that constantly being locked into the rest of the world has hampered our “inner wisdom”. Why is this important?

For many of us, most of these connections are never fleshed out in physical life and most of our time is ticked away tied to our screens—whether they be that of laptops, desktops, cameras, or the computer/video/stereo/phone device in your pocket. I am guilty of this myself: as a writer, much of my time is spent looking at the glowing rectangle with its bluish glow casting shadows on the walls while I work into the late hours of the night. I spend equal amount of time burning out my corneas handling work for the studio and cranking through the wonders of academia. It’s enough to make your head explode.

If we never unhook ourselves from the constant stream of information, will there not come a time when we no longer distinguish between wholesome information and filler information—the digital equivalent of a home-cooked meal versus fast food? What if there is simply too much data to imbibe on a daily basis between the Crackberry and fifty million social platforms to glean from? Ironically enough, we get to a point wherein we actually feel guilty for taking time away from reading the blogs, checking the email, and tending to our online selves. How is it viable to feel guilty for pulling out of these things if we are then nurturing our physical lives and in-person relationships?

Life is more than a virtual thread connecting you to another person, another life. I quit Twitter a couple of months ago because it no longer added anything to my physical life. Snippets of jokes, anecdotes, and news links were great, but most of my information consumption is streamlined these days by way of Tumblr, Google Reader, and Facebook. More is not better when it comes to information—less is spectacular.

If we cultivate our tangible lives, we might not spend so much time logged in to our digital ones. We might spend more time writing books, getting outside, travelling, and having the conversations of which fragments usually end up on Facebook anyway.