Day 374: Sharing Online, Living Offline

The Internet is straight magic.

You press some square buttons with your fingertips, some squiggly lines appear on a box of light, and voilà! Anyone in the world can access something you’ve created.

I’ve always loved putting stuff out there in the world, whether it’s through writing, music, videos, or products I’ve created. I plan to continue creating and sharing things online for as long as I can, because it’s a wonderful way to connect with people at scale.

While I love producing and sharing things online, I’ve found that in general, I’m happiest when living offline.

I’d much rather go hiking with friends than play video games, ask someone out on a date with my heart in my throat rather than swipe right on a dating app, sit and watch people walk by rather than scroll though a feed — you get the idea.

As the Internet penetrates more and more areas of our lives, especially now with most people stuck at home due to the pandemic, I’ve found that explicitly setting lifestyle guidelines has been instrumental for creating the space necessary to prioritize an embodied life. For example, I’ve had my phone on Do Not Disturb 24/7 for a year and a half now, and it’s been amazing at allowing me to be fully present in my activities rather than having my attention be constantly captured by notifications that don’t need an immediate response. Of course, it comes with tradeoffs — I’ve missed some spontaneous hangouts due to not checking my phone, but by and large, getting off the dopamine drip has been more than worth it.

I previously wrote about how I don’t enjoy meeting people over video chat but have had a hard time saying no. The result has been that emails go unanswered in my inbox because I keep putting off the unpleasant task of rejecting someone’s perfectly nice request, so I’m writing this post so that I can explain that me not wanting to video chat with them has nothing to do with them personally.

Here’s the lifestyle guideline I’m setting: I don’t use video chat to meet people socially.

This means that unless there’s a work-related reason or I’m already familiar with someone, I’m going to decline requests to meet over video chat because in my experience, they’re a poor foundation for developing meaningful relationships.

To be clear, I’m still happy to receive messages, check out people’s work, interact over Twitter, and build a connection via other means — it’s just that for me, I don’t enjoy using video chat as the starting off point.

The Internet is cool, but for many things, the offline world is way more magical.