A Case for the Digital Disaster
I feel there’s an assumption in the Digital Age that technology has made communicating easier, but honestly, I have such a hard time keeping my head on straight with the constantly rising notification count that I stop engaging altogether. I feel I can’t prioritize between workloads, and I feel guilty avoiding my friends online because I hate responding to group chats. Texting feels so removed from tone, empathy, or anything human, that I get so anxious talking even to friends just because I can’t read how they’re feeling. Plus, my worrying about it is so inefficiently time consuming that my battery’s never able to recharge. I’m wondering if anyone can better narrow down or add onto this specific kind of burnout – like, lately, I feel the only way to write is to do so without being distracted, and that just isn’t feasible. How do you cope with interconnectivity? Is this just a collegiate grind thing?
—Anonymous (4/14/2024)
Oof, I feel this question. Getting caught in the digital web and being overwhelmed by it is certainly a modern problem, and it’s not at all unnatural to feel daunted by the fact that, yes, your attention has become an automated availability to anyone who seeks it, even if for just a moment. In all my classes there are whispered mentions from professors and students alike about fatigue and lack of engagement, which IMO is perfectly normal after two semesters of prioritizing your work. But, it is easy to place all the blame on that glassy screen you look at every day (no, not the mirror). For myself, I’ve had to come to the grand realization that technology is not entirely harmful, it can even be useful once you begin to understand it as a tool. I’ll break my points down, but a lot of my advice is going to boil down to this, breathe. Touch grass or don’t but at least breathe in and out, in and out, now again.
If your phone or email is what you feel to be the source of your anxiety, then sometimes it is better to unplug. But it’s important to unplug with a purpose. Unplug with the knowledge that, eventually, you’re going to have to plug back in. It’s not a Matrix thing, not nearly as dire, but technology is here to stay. Do what it takes offline to make yourself comfortable, and steel yourself within an environment conducive to working, like the library. Strozier and other workspaces are open for use, and there’s much to be said about the interplay between how stressed your work makes you and where you work. 621 Art Gallery, for instance, offers studio hours from 12-3 p.m., and small spaces like Calvin’s Coffee House are quiet and comfortable (plenty of sofas there). You may need technology to finish your work, but you don’t need to live through tech to get done what you need. Make sure you aren’t cooped up in one space for too long. I’ve been guilty of lying in bed for days, admittedly, and none of those days are as equal to the moment I decided to get up and actually did it.
In the spirit of personal time, I’m also going to say that it’s okay to just say “no” to your friends if you need to recharge your own battery. But sometimes, time with friends can be just as remedial as time spent alone. There are ways to do this outside of spending time together in a digital space, and though you might have to communicate with them through text or email or whatever the kids use nowadays, understand that whatever you fear you might mess up is completely fixable by clarifying online or off. In ye olden days, people would sometimes go weeks without seeing their good friends or having a consistent back-and-forth between them, and while that may seem enviable at times, the rules for making or maintaining friendships are the same as they were and are even aided by the use of technology. That said, please prioritize your self before seeking to fulfill what may come to feel like a social quota in the eyes of others. A temporary social media cleanse can be just the ticket.
But keep in mind, hopping off Instagram or “X” (eye-roll) doesn’t mean you have to curl into a hermit cave and work yourself into a frothy-mouthed fury. You don’t always have to work, even if you feel like you’re clawing for air. Stephen King himself wrote in On Writing that as important as a routine is for creatives, the breaking of routine is just as important, and can bring inspirations that you couldn’t have had with a fettered mind. Take a walk; watch a show in between hours of working; treat yourself to takeout or have fun cooking. The key is to better situate your mind so that you can remind yourself of the fallibility of an end-all be-all. Calming yourself and finding ground in the middle of a shit storm is productive. Don’t torture yourself over missed deadlines or get stuck in an overly critical loop. Your ability to work will slowly become self-sufficient again. Can’t eat an elephant whole, but you can take it apart a little bit at a time and chew.
When you’re feeling ready to hit the grind once more after establishing the foundations of your Hierarchy of Needs, baby-step your way back into the work. A little bit of elephant here, tackle the elephant bit that needs to be done earlier than the other bit, open your email, and look at all the elephants there. Practice getting into the flow of working by compartmentalizing what needs to be done. Here, technology can once more be an excellent tool. Calendars, alarms, customizable browser pages – even physical, non-digital reminders like calendars or a white board can help accentuate a balance between “on” and “off”. Seeing a physical tracking of all you’ve done and all you’ve got ahead of you can help create a sense of progression and accomplishment. Treat your studies like exercise for the brain: you don’t want to overextend the muscle, you want to do just enough so that you can get a good night’s sleep.
You take your passions seriously for a reason. They’re difficult and hard to master, and processing as much as you can in a short amount of time can absolutely make your head split. As much as we love what we do, there are things outside of the work which need maintenance, and that includes ensuring you yourself are feeling well.
Written by Aidan Little
Edited by Sarah Lerner, Hope Fell
