(#3)Learning how to inhabit- the self: finding my pillars

Leaving phonewater behind and learning to navigate the land: human-curated media and relearning self-care

Welcome to part 3 of my series on ‘learning how to inhabit’ the world in these times, where I previously explored what I mean by ‘inhabit’ vs what our systems have taught us to ‘ex-habit’/ exhibit (part 1), and then moved to talk about how I was building pillars that could support me towards reclaiming my inner self- how writing was one of those key pillars (part 2). I’ve had a busy whirlwind of a month that’s slowed down for the time being, and I’m so happy to have had some time to sit down and write again, it feels like I waited so long and now I finally get to catch up and hang out with myself, and yes, share this with the world.

Before I get into the remaining pillars helping me inhabit my own inner self better, I wanted to share a little bit more background about my key ‘anti-pillar’, the foundational pillar I'm trying to replace-

Algorithmically-curated media: Interspersed amidst my writing on here, I’ve alluded to my concerns with how social media and algorithmically curated feeds are re-wiring our brains, and my desire to reclaim my attention from these spaces so that I can fill my days more intentionally- with activities that I actually want to do.

Discussion Candy re-conceptualises our phones (and the internet) as a metaphysical space: you are not “on your phone” but “in your phone”. You swim around in the ocean of the internet (phonewater), and are not really inhabiting whatever physical space you’re in during that time. “We are now amphibious creatures—we still go to work and eat and experience the world, but now we can also spend a very long time in the phonewater, and I’m starting to think you can’t really be in the phonewater and on dry land at the same time.”

She says ‘being on your phone is like being on drugs’, and while it is a helpful tool to numb out from time to time, it is important to realise that we (as in persons who are more or less chronically online) are often using our internet time to self-soothe/ self-medicate. Especially if you’ve spent some part of your formative years constantly visiting and receiving substantial amounts of dopamine from the internet, then I’m pretty sure that going ‘in the internet’ is a comforting as well as habitual refuge from the world. I think there is still so much good the internet and our phones offer us, but I can also recognise that as algorithms have gotten better and better at retaining my attention, the line between going and staying on the internet out of enjoyment vs. a compulsion that feels out of my control is only getting more and more blurry.

drowning in phonewater. image credits: Fran Reina

Thus, I’ve been trying to regulate my social media and phone usage, consciously making it harder for myself to get sucked into phonewater. However, I understand that if I want to make this change sustainable, it shouldn’t feel like restriction or scarcity, but rather feel like joy and abundance. And thus, my attempts to build new pillars into my life are part of my endeavour to enrich my inner world- so that it feels strong, rich and diverse on its own- so that I no longer need the pillar of phonewater self-soothing; so that, I can enjoy the internet for what it offers me intentionally without getting sucked into its waters. Thus, rather than focusing on what negatives to remove from my life, I am attempting to focus on what positives I need to bring in.

With that context, here are a two more pillars/practices that I am trying to build into my life to nourish and re-wild my inner world.

1. Human-created/curated media: I have trying to keep books around me so that they can be my go-to rather than a phone break between work. I recently asked my friends for recommendations for books that feel pleasant and light to read, unlike the books I gravitate towards that are always about the frickin’ state of the world and are heavy and saddening (and like, I adore these books, but I also like to feel joy and escape from the world sometimes). I also have substack on my phone, a few podcasts and audiobooks that I also have on hand. I’ve also removed recommendations and watch history from my YouTube, and so, I can only watch the videos from channels I’ve subscribed to, or else I have to go and consciously search videos up myself. This does mean I’m kinda out of touch with the trends sometimes, but I don’t mind it so far.

While algorithmically designed feeds are more successful in capturing our attentions for long periods of time (quantity of time), I think there is a huge difference in the quality of entertainment when a human or group of humans come together (at least for now, until AI takes over the arts completely) to create works of art to express themselves, or to make other people to learn, laugh, cry, be entertained and just generally partake in the human experience. I’ve realised I’ve been watching new shows at a much higher pace than before, maybe because I don’t spend as much time on my phone anymore, and its actually been so lovely to be totally engrossed into different lores, and just appreciate humans being creative and trying to do things. Additionally, books, movies and TV series, however commercialised they may be, aren’t overtly designed with the intention to get you to feel inadequate about yourself like social media does, which then incentivises you to buy from targeted ads. They are experiences where you don’t actually think about yourself that much and you get to immerse into other worlds/ experiences, which isn’t always the case with social media, which is incentivised to make you think about yourself whether you’re conscious of it or not. So, yes- I am trying to make it a point to consciously up my intake of human curated media, and I think its going great.

a curation of some of the human-curated media that I have been consuming recently

2. ‘Self care’: Indulgence + self-parenting vs #treatyourself:

Self-care has quite a radical history, associated strongly with Black community organising in the US, from Angela Davis to Audre Lorde. It advocated for activists to adopt mindfulness t echniques, learn self -preservation and take care of their nutrition and other needs in order to equip and enrich themselves as they navigated inequitable, carceral sociopolitical systems. The co-option by capitalism and social media today means that ‘self-care’ can mean anything and everything. And its easy to buy skin-care/extra slices of cake/bed-rot and label all that self-care when it may or may not be. #self-care and #treat-yourself feel almost synonymous. However, more and more, the terminology that has been helpful for me is to distinguish self-care into two buckets: indulgence and self-parenting.

‘Indulgence’ is enjoying the pleasures of being an embodied human-enjoying movies, laughing with friends, enjoying touch, delicious food, enjoying a movie marathon, napping in, enjoying a vacation, buying clothes you love, bed-rotting away on your laptop scrolling on pinterest eating takeout, having a drunk night out with friends- etc. Being able to indulge is a privilege, but as emma chamberlain is always saying in her podcast, we live today in an ‘age of indulgence’. At least for those of us living relatively privileged lives, indulgences are more easily available than ever, and it often takes more mental effort to not indulge than it does to indulge. I think being able to indulge is a key and beautiful part of the human experience, but I also think that having indulgences available to us at all times make indulgences feel not as special or pleasurable. And having a frame to understand my desire to indulge but also understanding that indulgences feel sweeter when they feel somewhat scarce has helped me create containers for them better in my mind. For examples, Wednesday evenings after work are now a designated as an unapologetically indulgent time for me. I can watch all my fangirl-related content, order in food if I want to and do whatever my indulgent heart desires. Friday nights also tend to be a time to let loose in a more social way. I can also plan in fun days/trips to have fun solo experiences, or with fun and indulgent experiences with my friends and family that I can look forward to.

The other part of self-care that tends to get overlooked is the ‘self-parenting’ part of it, because its not as fun or sexy. Am I able to gently set certain rules/discipled structures with myself like a very nice and loving parent would? Talking to people my age, it often astounds us how we were able to wake up at 6 or 7 am everyday, go to school, go to tuitions, do homework, play with friends, go on the internet, watch TV, study and go to sleep every week day. I do acknowledge that then, I desired to be an adult and ‘do whatever I want, whenever I want’. Adulting responsibilities, however, I soon learnt, means the ‘do whatever, whenever’ doesn’t really hold true for majority of us. Today, I think there are merits in taking some lessons from more structured parts of our lives- although it can come from a gentler, more forgiving place now. Having these means we are able to be more intentional about how we spend our days, and also don’t just jump from crisis to crisis (like paying taxes the night before deadline, then cramming all our work one day before its due etc).

We live under structures we don’t always have a say in, but I think self-parenting can create the structure we need to be able to navigate within the systems we live in. So that we may be able to live lives as close to our desires as we can under existing constraints. Self-parenting helps articulate the parts of me that are trying to look out for current and future me’s best interests. Trying to prep a few healthy lunches in advance, paying my bills and taxes in time, trying to have decent sleeping and waking up times, and saying ‘no’ more often to things that feel overwhelming to take on/ detrimental to my long term interests- have been some self-parenting attempts from my end.

So- I am trying to write and journal more, consume more intentionally books/movies/music/TV as opposed to social media, and incorporating more intentionally, self-parenting and indulgent moments into my life. These are some key pillars that I am trying to build as first steps towards enriching the quality of my inner life, and building a foundation of intentionality to my daily thoughts, practices and actions. However, I hope for these to not just stop at some vague sense of ‘self-improvement’. In How to do Nothing, Odell writes that reclaiming our attention from algorithms is the first step, and the second step is to turn our attention towards the world- to the places we inhabit and the present time we are living in. When we begin to care about our places and have more agency over our time, Odell believes this creates the conditions where we can be more focused and fight to save all that we love and all that is being lost. I hope to revisit this series on inhabiting when I get comfortable with step 1, and begin my foray into step 2 and beyond.