Why (& How) I'm Taking a Break 👋

...it's not you, it's me

At the Writing Desk, by Childe Hassam (1910) #

For fourteen years now — basically, since I started writing online with any earnestness — I’ve taken a decent chunk of summertime off the internet. The past few years it’s been all of July (as well as two weeks off during the Christmas holidays), and it’s become a delightful, rhythmic way I space out my writing work with some much-needed analog sanity.

This summer, however, I’m doing something different, and it’s considerably more drastic. I’m taking the entire summer off the entire internet. As best I can, I’m planning on no online publishing, no posting on social media, and no engagement otherwise via the internet. I may have to make small concessions — I’m hoping to announce the date and location of next year’s pilgrimage before my summer break, for instance (but if the details aren’t ready I may have to announce it in June) — yet otherwise it’ll be a very, very low internet summer for me.

I’ll check email once or twice a week, and I may still occasionally listen to some favorite podcasts. I’ll also need to pop onto the internet a few times to make sure Scholé Hall stuff is up to speed in prep for next school year …but that’s about it for the next three months, Lord-willing.

Why? Why such a drastic summer plan?, you may ask. After all, I make a decent portion of our family’s income via this newsletter, and there’s a risk that I’ll potentially lose paying subscribers. I’ll also become even more out of the loop with current events, cultural trends, and zeitgeisty news than I already am.

To the latter point, I say: promise? Because that’s a plus in my book. I’ve had enough experience with my past monthly summer breaks to know there’s nothing significant worth missing that I won’t find out some other way anyway (usually from in-person friends and family). Even though I’m never one to keep up with pop culture or ephemeral memes anyway, I’ve found that a brief respite from the constant barrage of new information is so good for my mind and soul. It’s like hitting the reset button on what really matters and what I actually care about. Spoiler: It’s not which actor said what ridiculous thing, who’s mad at who on Twitter, or what new thing everybody is buying.

Here’s the bonafide, official reason I’m taking an internet break: I’m using the summer to finish my novel manuscript. It’s a story I’ve been working on for almost a decade, and it’s taken a backseat during so many seasons for so many reasons. I have no guilt about any of those seasons because they were legitimate — but this summer, I don’t see any urgent, pertinent reason to keep that writing project on the back burner anymore. Cal Newport’s recent book¹, plus the women in my Cigar Club, have convinced me that dedicating a specific, time-bound season is my best bet for finally finishing the damn thing.

Sure, I could still write online and write my book. But it’d be much harder. I know this from experience. For all of my books, I’ve had to temporarily pause other commitments, everything from publishing new essays to folding laundry, in order to cross the finish line. This writing project is my biggest yet, both in word count and in emotional tax, and I know myself well enough that if I don’t say no to everything but this, it won’t get done. Even me saying this publicly right now will drastically increase my chances of finishing the thing, so thank you in advance for holding me accountable by simply reading this.

A summer is only a summer. It’s not forever, and in the big scheme of things, this is no big deal. When I consider my favorite living authors, none of them have a strong social media presence, they take years to write their novels, and they’re dedicated to quality over quantity. As I’ve said before, a wise person takes note of best practices from folks who are better than them, and they copy.

At the end of my writing life, I’d rather point to a small stack of excellent books than a haphazard pile of tweets (or even pretty-good essays).

So. I’m quieting my online presence from June 1-August 31, 2024, and I’ll be back in the fall. And I’m very excited about it.

Besides finally finishing my manuscript, here are some other benefits I’m looking forward to:

1. I’m tired of all the noise. I don’t know about y’all, but the internet seems so very noisy these days — even noisier than usual, and even on Substack. I’m not even talking about all the angry vitriol that’s always simmering in the background, I’m talking about all the navel-gazing, all the look-at-my-think-piece-to-the-latest-viral-thing, all the incessant need to talk online all. the. time. It’s wearying. I need a break from the noise.

2. I honestly don’t have much to say right now. Six years ago when I started teaching locally, I was concerned about the gig potentially diminishing my writing time, but it turned out that my writing vastly improved and I became much more prolific. Why? Because I had something to say. Writers who do nothing but write don’t have much to say for long. While I’ve got plenty going on in my life offline, I’m super sensitive to the symptoms of navel-gazing (talking ceaselessly about oneself, writing about writing, repeatedly talking about the same topics — AI, living analog, how great Substack is compared to the rest of the internet, etc.). I can sense that stuff creeping up in me, which is a sign that it’s time for a break. If I don’t have much of interest to say, then I don’t need to ‘just say something.’ Nope. There’s no need to add needless noise. If I published this summer, it wouldn’t be interesting. I don’t want to burden you with that. I look forward to returning with gallons of ideas to share thanks to an internet break.

3. A reminder that what I do isn’t terribly important — in a good way. Every August for several years now, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how little people actually cared that I took a break the previous month. Truly. Writing a newsletter or posting on social media isn’t curing cancer or digging life-saving wells in an impoverished village. No one needs my writing; a temporary pause won’t hurt a damn soul. Also, I’ve got literal decades of my writing out on the internet if someone really needs to read me (though I’d question their sanity).

4. It also reminds me that I’m not that special — in a good way. As much as I love the destruction of publishing doors thanks to a democratic internet, it does mean that sometimes folks get the idea that they are Oh So Very Important because people read them. None of us are any more important than anyone else, which also means that none of us are that special—in all the right ways. My words matter, sure, and so do yours, but so does the knitted sweater made by the grandmother who lives down my street, and so do the ideas percolating in the mind of that university student who lives in that nameless town and spends her summers working at the local coffee shop. A break from online accolades is good for every one of us. I recommend it.

5. A break puts the internet in its rightful place in my life. The algorithms aren’t the boss of me, and as beautiful a thing it is that I can connect here in Texas with whomever you are right now in Australia, we get to be the ones that tell the internet, “Not right now.” It’s the same reason why we need to actually power down our phones and not just silence them — that press of the button tangibly reminds us that we’re the boss of us, not our devices.

6. Which is another way to say, I’m analog — and so are you. Routine internet breaks remind me that I live in the 3-D world among my backyard garden, neighborhood coffee shop (from where I’m currently writing this), and church pew. Locking the doors on my digital living spaces forces me to leave those places and live more fully where I actually belong: in the real world.

7. And finally, a longer internet break will teach me that I can do hard things. I’ll admit that this won’t be easy, especially at first. I’ll be tempted to “quickly” pop over to Substack’s Notes to see if anyone’s sharing my essays, or over to X to see what’s the topic du jour. Just like a weight increase in training at the gym, hard challenges build stronger muscles and tell our bodies that we’re more capable than we imagined. I want hard-earned evidence that I can, indeed, leave the internet for three months and live to tell the tale. …And yes, I realize how silly and trite that sounds, which is precisely my point.

If you’re curious as to the history of my annual July screen breaks, I have a new essay at Hearth & Field that unpacks my whys and hows behind them — and why I believe all of us would benefit from regular Internet breaks.

Practically speaking, here’s what to expect for the next few months:

• Next week I’ll post the subscribers’ monthly Grat Chat for May, as usual (it’s possibly my favorite thing we do behind the paywall here in The Commonplace).

• If I have time, I’ll publish one last essay for subscribers (ironically, I have about three topics on my mind), but I’m not entirely sure I’ll have time. I’m not going to sweat it if it doesn’t happen, but if I do, hey — one more essay.

• The last new edition of 5 Quick Things for everyone will go out on Friday, May 31.

• I’ve got two more episodes of A Drink With a Friend to share with you—and they’re really great. I think you’ll love them.

• Then—for thirteen Fridays, starting June 7, I’ve queued up short weekly emails that’ll land in your inbox with quick links to previous years’ 5QT, one essay, and one podcast episode. I’ve got legit years of archives, and it’d be a shame to not dust them off and give them some light. I have no plans to bog you down with needless links, pinky-swear: these emails will be genuinely short and sweet, readable in under a minute.

In the meantime, I’ll be here, busily doing what I need to do to get ready for the summer: finishing that email queue, finalizing my summer reading list (books specifically curated for novel writing), deciding which house projects to tackle once I log my daily word count, planning my workouts, and anticipating upcoming travel (Greece! Oregon!). I hope to dust off my micro.blog account to post photos of Greece, but I’m not going to pressure myself (I especially love ignoring the internet when I travel). Otherwise, I’ll share about our pilgrimage when I return.

Alrighty... I’d like to hear from you: Do you have any rituals or practices for getting offline regularly? Is anything holding you back from trying it out, even short-term?

Ora et Labora,

Tsh

1. I’ve got Type 2 ambition, if you’re curious.