90’s summer
On May 30th, I quit my second job.
I also quit my phone.
There wasn’t some dramatic announcement. I didn’t delete social media, drop my iPhone into a lake (though I have done that once), or disappear into the woods.
I just… stopped keeping up.
I stopped treating every text, voicemail, email, and notification like it required my attention simply because it had arrived.
I let messages sit.
I let calls go unanswered.
I let the little red bubbles pile up.
And somewhere along the way, I stopped believing they were all mine to take care of.
Roughly 90 days later, this is what my phone looks like:
And you know what?
I’m okay.
More than okay, actually.
Because somewhere underneath those completely ridiculous numbers is proof of something I desperately needed to remember:
We were never meant to be this accessible.
Think about how absolutely bizarre our expectations have become.
There was a time- not even that long ago- when someone could call your house and you simply… wouldn’t be there.
That was it.
No mystery.
No offense taken.
No wondering why they hadn’t answered when you could clearly see they were active on social media seventeen minutes ago.
You called.
Nobody answered.
Maybe you left a message.
And then- you went on with your life.
If someone left their house for the afternoon, they were simply gone.
They might be at the grocery store.
Or sitting beside a pool.
Or eating dinner with their family.
Nobody had access to them instantaneously.
And somehow, society survived.
Then we all started carrying tiny computers around in our pockets.
And somewhere between unlimited texting, read receipts, email apps, Life360, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Snapchat, Slack, voicemail transcription, group chats, and push notifications, the ability to contact someone slowly became an expectation that they should respond.
And respond quickly.
We’ve created an entire etiquette around it.
Did she see my text?
I sent another message.
I emailed yesterday.
Did you get my voicemail?
I messaged you on Facebook, too.
A person can be standing in her kitchen making dinner while simultaneously being accessible to her employer, coworkers, kids, schools, teachers, coaches, family members, friends, acquaintances, businesses, volunteer organizations, social media followers, and literally anyone who happens to have her phone number or social handle.
Twenty-four hours a day. 365.
It’s insane.
I needed out.
The past year(s) of my life have been full.
Not the cute, “wow, we’re so busy!” kind of full.
Like.
Unbutton your jeans after Thanksgiving Dinner.
Full.
Four kids.
A new career.
Fall harvest.
Our first high school basketball season in the middle of junior high basketball season.
Kids in three different school buildings.
Track.
Golf.
Tutors.
Spring planting.
Tax season.
Baseball.
Softball.
Sports camps.
Church camps.
Drop-offs and Pick-ups
Library programs.
Appointments.
Laundry.
Groceries.
Family commitments.
And that invisible mental checklist that somehow regenerates faster than I can cross anything off of it.
Until May 30th, I was also working a second job. (a job I LOVED!) Which made leaving it even harder.
When I finally resigned, I thought eliminating an entire job from my life would magically leave me with all this extra time. After all - it’s SUMMER!
Ha.
Instead, I realized just how tired I actually was. And not necessarily the kind of tired another eight hours of sleep fixes.
I was tired of being needed.
Tired of feeling behind.
Tired of answering.
Tired of remembering.
Tired of my brain constantly scanning for the next thing I needed to do, fix, finish, schedule, answer, buy, remember, or take care of for somebody else.
So when summer finally arrived, I decided I didn’t want to spend it catching up.
I wanted to actually enjoy it.
So I gave myself a 90s summer.
There weren’t really any rules.
I just stopped caring so much about being reachable.
My phone went on Do Not Disturb.
Sometimes it stayed on the charger.
Sometimes it stayed at home.
At one point, it spent 48 hours fallen behind my nightstand before I even bothered looking for it.
Sometimes I knew exactly where it was and simply chose not to pick it up.
I stopped making it my job to clear notifications.
I stopped responding to something simply because someone had contacted me.
And maybe most importantly, I stopped treating someone else’s decision to send me a message as an automatic addition to my to-do list.
That one was big.
Because isn’t that essentially what a notification has become?
Someone else does something. They send a text. Write an email. Leave a voicemail. Tag you. Message you. Comment on something. And suddenly your brain registers:
Now I have something to do.
Respond. Answer. Acknowledge. Remember. Fix. Schedule. Decide. Follow up.
And apparently there is no upper limit to how many people can hand you one of these tiny digital assignments in a single day.
So this summer?
I stopped accepting all of them.
And the world kept spinning.
Nothing exploded.
The internet did not collapse.
Civilization continued.
People who needed me found a way to reach me. Or maybe they didn’t. I have no idea.
And oddly enough, that’s kind of the point.
Things that actually mattered eventually rose to the surface.
The things that actually mattered eventually rose to the surface, while quite a few things that felt extremely urgent to someone else turned out not to be particularly urgent at all.
Meanwhile, something else happened: I started noticing my own life again.
I sat outside.
I rode my bike.
I made the s’more.
I read the bedtime story.
I built a fire.
I read a book.
I trained the dogs.
I jumped in the pool.
I gardened.
I went places without mentally carrying around a waiting room full of people whose messages I still needed to answer.
I spent time with my kids.
I spent time taking care of myself.
I paid attention to what I was eating.
I started unlearning habits I hadn’t even realized had become habits.
And somewhere in there, I started questioning this idea I apparently picked up along the way that being a good person meant being endlessly available to everyone.
Some people didn’t like it.
Of course they didn’t. When you’ve spent years being accessible, people notice when you suddenly aren’t.
Messages went unanswered.
Things took longer.
Friendships and acquaintance-ships got less attention.
I’m sure there were people who thought I was ignoring them.
So let me make myself perfectly clear:
I WAS.
Not maliciously.
Not because I suddenly stopped caring about everyone in my life.
I just finally understood that I could not keep choosing everyone else’s request for my attention over whatever- or whoever- was actually standing in front of me.
Sometimes I saw the text and didn't answer.
Sometimes I knew there was a voicemail and didn't listen to it.
And then I went outside.
I had to become okay with the possibility that other people wouldn’t understand that.
Because they didn't have to.
Look at these numbers.
29,339 emails.
1,846 social notifications.
923 text messages.
56 voicemails.
Ninety days.
A year ago, that screen probably would have sent me straight into an anxiety spiral.
I’m so behind.
This is terrible.
I need to get caught up.
I’d lose sleep over trying to catch up.
And then I would have started.
Clearing.
Deleting.
Opening.
Responding.
Listening.
Scrolling.
Probably losing sleep trying to make every little red circle disappear so I could finally feel…
Caught up.
But caught up with what?
There will be another email.
Another text.
Another notification.
Another voicemail.
Another person who needs something.
There is no finish line.
I could spend an entire evening responding to everything on my phone and wake up tomorrow morning with more.
That’s the game.
And maybe the answer isn’t becoming more efficient at playing it.
Maybe the answer is occasionally deciding you’re just not going to play.
I don't want to be accessible all the time anymore.
Reachable in an emergency?
Of course.
Present for the people I love?
Absolutely.
Dependable at my job?
Yes.
But endlessly accessible?
No.
I don’t owe the world that.
And I don’t think any of us do.
Owning a phone does not obligate me to answer it.
Receiving a text does not create an emergency.
Someone wanting a response does not automatically mean I need to stop what I’m doing and provide one.
Someone else’s sense of urgency does not automatically have to become mine.
And a little red notification badge is certainly not a measure of my character.
It took me nearly 40 years- and apparently more than 32,000 unanswered digital nudges- to start understanding that.
My 90s summer is over.
The kids are back in school.
Calendars are filling again.
Fall is coming.
Harvest won’t be far behind it.
Schedules and practices and games and meetings and all the things that make up our very full life are starting again.
But what began as a summer pledge to myself has quietly turned into a pretty drastic lifestyle change.
At some point I should probably do something about those 29,339 emails.
Probably.
But I don’t think I’m ever completely going back.
Because for this one summer, I remembered what it felt like to leave the house and simply be wherever I was.
And maybe most importantly, I realized that while I was spending all those years trying so hard to stay caught up with everyone else-
the person who had been waiting the longest for my attention
was me.