Don’t Just Talk About Unplugging: Actually Unplug 🔌

or, a reminder to all of us to practice what we preach

Los Pescadores Valencianos (1895), by Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida #

A wee caveat: Normally I just write to my readers, most of whom I assume aren’t also writers (I actually feel like writers have a tendency to navel-gaze by writing about writing too much). But this time, I’m writing both to fellow writers and, of course, to my readers. Because you, too, live in the twenty-first century, this topic pertains to all of us, even if you don’t write.

Onward.

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I transferred my online writing efforts to Substack almost five years ago. It was a risk; this was a new venture with very little track record and I already had a few well-established platforms. I talked with several of my writing colleagues about this risk I was thinking of taking, and most of them replied with, “What’s Substack?” I even hopped on the phone with one of Substack’s founders, who graciously answered many of my questions and concerns. Clearly, it was smaller back then.

I ultimately switched over, obviously, moving my email list and Patreon account to Substack, merging the two and pouring most of my online energy here. The platform is already known for its simplicity, but it was even simpler back then: there were no Notes, no Chat, no real way to interact with other Substack writers (other than a separate Slack channel, which I was invited to by the creators as an early adopter so that they could beta-test new ideas).

Let’s just say that I’ve had—maybe not a front-row view—but definitely a close-to-the-stage view of watching Substack grow in popularity to now, where it seems almost inevitable that it’s going the way of blogs and podcasts: everyone has one. It’s no longer interesting (in the business sense, not in the reading sense) to have a Substack, and most Very Online folks definitely don’t ask, “What’s a Substack?”

I’m mostly glad about this. I’ve long believed in the maxim that there’s plenty of room at the table for writers, both burgeoning and well-established, to pull up a chair and share their ideas and talents. It’s one reason I publish 5 Quick Things just about every Friday—because I genuinely love sharing others’ words with my readers.

But I’ll admit that I’m starting to sniff out a scent I noticed about, oh, 10-12 years ago when blogs were really taking off like wildfire (remember, I’ve been publishing online for 17 years now… I’m a troglodyte). It’s this tendency to talk, and then talk some more, then talk with each other, and over-talk with each other, then interrupt each other with all the talking, about one particular topic into the ground, nearly rendering it useless by dissecting it onto the lab table to the point of unrecognition. That topic right now, seemingly everywhere on Substack, is AI—and particularly, how must we live with its inevitable creep into every part of our lives.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m passionate—beyond passionate—about this idea. I’m even part of a class-action lawsuit because several of my published books are used in an AI generator without my permission. I refuse to go near the stuff—I’ve admittedly never even searched for any AI-type tools, let alone tried them out.¹ In short: I absolutely agree; AI is bad for our souls and our society.

Everyone who shares this sentiment is right, and yes, we do need to unplug from The Machine. We need to question how we got here (*cough* the Enlightenment *cough*). We need to rein it in so that the slippery slope doesn’t descend us into a hellish landscape of artificial everything. We need to know history well enough to admit that we’re always wrong when we say, “It’ll be fine; I’ll just use it in its rightful place and keep it at that.” When it comes to technology and progress, we never do this. We lie to ourselves constantly about this.

Here’s my concern, and here’s where the writers on Substack come in: How much can we really talk about this without just …living it? How much weight do our words hold when we don’t practice what we preach? I’ll admit to a certain phenomenon I see right now: those who talk about artificial intelligence a lot also seem to be online a lot. Yes, there are many interesting angles to explore where we’re going technologically as a culture, and sure, let’s write about them. But fellow writers and thinkers: don’t forget to actually unplug from The Machine instead of incessantly writing about unplugging from The Machine.

Here’s a short backstory. Simple living was my topic of choice when I first began writing online. In 2007, the only folks writing about this online were young guys; bros driven to one-up each other by how little they could live on. They’d brag about having a mattress on the floor and own only three t-shirts. I wanted to read stuff about what it was like to be someone like me who cared about living with less: a mom with young children.

The more I wrote about simple living the more I learned, and for the most part I loved this topic. I still do. I still live with many of its tenets. But the underbelly I didn’t love so much was that this crowd was also quite judgmental. Weekly I’d get emails telling me how I wasn’t really living simply because we had a television, or still encouraged readers to buy paper books and not go fully digital, or because we weren’t 100% self-sufficient on our own land. It got really old, and to be frank, all the noise and one-upping turned me off from writing about simple living. I eventually shifted to writing more about a holistic mindset, about discovering what really matters to you and then living accordingly (this, clearly, led me to the Benedictine Rule of Life, but that’s another rabbit trail).

Because history repeats itself (or it at least rhymes), and because time on the internet shrinks in comparison to analog life, I see an inevitability happening here in writing about AI, especially here on Substack. If we’re not intentional, we’ll be driven by an effort to be the reigning Thought Leader™️ on how to live without AI and start one-upping each other on how extreme we are about unplugging from The Machine—and in the process, we’ll stop making regular, fruitful time from actually unplugging ourselves. And in doing so, we’ll stop reaping said benefits from living analog.

For my first ten years working online, I wrote about simple living while staying insanely busy, taking on more and more and more work. I didn’t sleep well for years because I was online way too much. Kyle eventually took on more of the household tasks because my online work supported the whole family in ways we never imagined. I outsourced part of my kids’ homeschooling because I just didn’t have the time to grow my online platform and be fully focused on my family. And not once did the irony go unnoticed, percolating there in the background. Deep down, I was constantly bothered by it.

I purposely took a business hit from around 2017 to 2020 when I stopped putting most of my writing eggs into the social media basket (like Instagram). My audience stagnated, and in comparison to my peers, my numbers slowed². I took a hit. And the hit was entirely worth it because what shifted in those years was my adoption of a dramatically healthier philosophy, lifestyle, and approach to my work as a writer.

This is all I’m saying… Yes, tell others to unplug from The Machine. But make sure you do it, too. Don’t live and breathe your work here on Substack. Don’t care about growing your audience here to the sacrifice of the things that really, truly matter to you. Say what you feel compelled to say, and then get offline. And yep, I’m telling this to myself just as much as anyone, because I am a fickle human with short-term memory just as much as the next gal.

If you’re a reader of Substack newsletters and not a creator of one, this goes for you as well (which, if you’re a creator of one, I’d hope you’re also a reader of some). Read the good stuff, and share it (thank you for that, actually!). But then get offline.

Here are my top ten small, doable suggestions for unplugging from The Machine:

1. Leave your phone when you leave your house.

2. Switch to a dumbphone, or at least dumb-ify your smartphone.

3. Every week connect in person with someone in your real world.

4. Read paper books, both old and new (though I concur with C.S. Lewis: read three old for every one new because you need to remember where we’ve come from).

5. Go on a daily walk. Twice, if you can (one in the morning, and one after dinner).

6. Make 90% of your meals at home and eat at least three dinners a week around the table with no screens on or present.

7. Start a backyard garden, or at least have a potted plant or two. All the science is there about why we need literal dirt on our literal feet and hands.

8. Cultivate an analog hobby: a sport, a craft, a thing to tinker with. We’re made to make (more on this throughout March here on The Commonplace!).

9. Fight acedia by doing the opposite of what you feel like doing at any given moment — do the purposely harder thing, even in small ways (like taking the parking spot farther away).

10. And finally, practice a weekly Sabbath. I once heard the advice that if you work manually throughout the week, make sure part of your Sabbath is contemplative (i.e., read). If you work mentally throughout the week, make sure part of your Sabbath is physical (i.e., go on a hike, dig in the dirt, play at the park). You’re a type of knowledge worker if you write online, so do something physical during your weekly Sabbath.

I’m not preaching these thoughts from up on high as someone who’s figured it all out, I’m sharing a simple prophecy as someone who’s been writing online for almost two decades and is well aware of the trends.

Write well. Encourage your readers to unplug. And then unplug yourselves by letting go of staying up front in the AI-focused conversation. Don’t care about being a Thought Leader™️. Just share what you’re called to share, engage in the topic with others online just a bit, and then go play your guitar. Or play a board game. Or go on a walk. Or have neighbors over for dinner. You get the gist.

Right here with you — ora et labora,

Tsh

1. Though I know that technically AI is everywhere and we can’t help but interact with it if we live in the twenty-first century; heck, spell-check is a form of AI.

2. Don’t get me wrong, they still grew, and in fact, they grew organically because those who found me actually found me out of their own interests, and not from some inflated viral hit. I’m profoundly grateful for this.