how to resist the pull of the winter scroll
strategies to balance your resistance to the rectangle of delight
snow and ice still covering Heart Lake near Mt. Shasta in late spring 2024 shot on my Sony a6000
It’s December. Winter is almost officially here and as the days get shorter, the pull and ease of tech gets stronger and stronger. I’ve spent the last decade viewing my phone as a way to relax, to rest, to check-in with friends, to develop or deepen connections. Combined with my tendency towards hope this leads me to overlook the often insidious designs that guide my every move from app, to app, and from platform to platform.
This year I finally had to come to terms with my phone use and it’s clear and unrelenting harms to myself and those around me.
My partner rarely uses his phone, almost constantly his nose is in a book instead and I have great admiration for this behavior. I’m the opposite, I try to be better about reading instead but always end up in my default setting, scrolling Notes on Substack or taking a look thru my feed to find the latest YouTube video with commentary on the state of the world or a view into history I can get lost in.
I’m constantly looking for ways to distract myself and consume more despite knowing better. It’s hard to sit with boredom even though that is the gateway to my creative practice. I teach the very things that are my struggles because of the fact that I see so much of this behavior as cultural, almost inescapable. When I’m knitting or sketching on public transit, I can people-watch discretely and everyone else around me is pulled into their rectangle of delight.
a photo of me holding my rectangle of delight, ready to scroll while in the sun shot on my Sony a6000
This is habit formed and calcified in the early pandemic when it was our core way to connect. But no matter how many cool things we find in our afternoon scroll, the algorithms showing us things always have sinister ulterior motives. I used to get a real thrill from the randomness and playful discovery on my TikTok for-you page. The concept of chance connection or learning kept me coming back endlessly.
Because of that chance element, things that make me keel over with laughter would be right beside videos that would make me feel insecure, activate comparison, turn up my doomerism, and feed my deep fears and anxiety about the state of the world.
TikTok had me returning even more so because of the social media entrepreneurship gospel I had steeped myself in. That was the place videos about my work, ideas, and teaching were getting the most traction. I had to do it, for my business, and occasionally have fun watching videos that would disrupt my sleep. Yet since leaving two months ago as a part of a two week scroll fast as a part of The Hikers Way, I haven’t been back. There have been no measurable losses for my business, but incredible gains for my wellbeing.
a watercolor sketch of some leaves I observed this week instead of scrolling
Why would the people behind these apps want their users to be in a state of misery or dysregulation?
Because then we buy things to patch the holes they put in us. We watch more ads, occasionally clicking through and giving them commissions. I remember on Instagram, every story I watched from a friend was followed by 2-3 ads for new hiking pants or other products that I would be convinced I needed.
That’s why I prefer to write in this space, where individual paid subscribers support my work instead of sponsors or endless video ads clogging up every square inch of the screen. Have you looked up a recipe lately? The ad placements on websites are getting violently overbearing and becoming a true accessibility nightmare.
The continual enshittification of the places we used to call “home” online is a process that needs to be properly addressed with grief. We are in the bargaining phase, often wishing that the algorithms would go back to the way they were in 2015, 2019, 2021, and they just won’t.
Many of us, myself included, believed in these spaces wholeheartedly to break down institutional barriers and create the kind of world we wanted to live in. They became the places we turned to for connection and recognition of our work that we need as artists.
But the sooner we confront our sadness and anger with our loss we can recognize and accept that they are no longer what they were and begin to find peace with our grief.
This brings me to the part about building your resistance this winter. Cozy time on the couch with your cat can very easily fall into a doomscroll if you aren’t careful. Being snowed in can be an opportunity to be creative or to consume content relentlessly.
But when you think about what would be the most positive experience for your wellbeing, you can recognize the long dark of the winter is a chance to be creative.
As you cozy up in your favorite sweaters and brew a cup of decaf chai tea, you should dig out your old materials, your collage scraps, and your yarn stashes and make a plan to make something. Need to figure out which of the platforms are pulling you into the worst rabbit holes? I have more strategies for you in this post.
When I left Instagram, my worst app, last November, I started knitting because it helped me replace that need my hand was craving for constant stimulation, especially in social situations.
Knitting became a craft that taught me to be a better teacher, to return to the mind of the beginner, and to clarify a practice of creative rest that was aligned with my values. But the practice wasn’t easy. It took time, energy, and devotion to learn what I was doing and how to continually improve.
The best resistance we have this winter to the pull of screens of any kind is to build a devotional practice to something. That’s what these easy AI slop generators can’t do, they can never mimic the insatiable persistence to learn and figure things out, even when they feel like impossible limitations. On the other side of that persistence are incredible rewards if you’re willing to stay on the trail there.
Here are some strategies to keep you from getting stuck and falling off:
Find craft community: The real reason I stuck with knitting despite my honest struggles with it was through people in my network who already knew how. Friends would share a tip or two, YouTube videos + taking notes helped me clarify techniques, but the most helpful thing was finding a knitting circle at a local yarn shop that was full of queer people in my area with a wide range of skill levels.
Look up what already exists near you. Craft nights, maker spaces, stitch-n-bitch sessions, mending circles, material swaps, and even beginner workshops in your area to show up and make things.
Start your own third space. Students in my watercolor class were devising a way to meet up together at the local library to continue to practice together. Sometimes if you don’t see the thing you are looking for, you need to be brave enough to make it. Create a Meetup gathering at a local park for your particular craft and turn it into a picnic. Talk to local restaurants and cafes, and ask when are their slow times? Could you help drive folks there when it’s nice and quiet to create? Are local bookshops or supply stores open to you setting up chairs in a corner and making with others at a certain time each week?
Write new boundaries: The hardest thing for me in releasing the pull of my phone was building better boundaries around how much of my scroll behavior I was willing to tolerate. For me this was finding replacements, sketching or painting instead of scrolling. Knitting and listening to an audio book instead of an endless stream of political commentary YouTube videos.
Define what moderation looks like for you. So often I see people thinking this needs to be an all-or-nothing game. It’s not. You get to determine how much or how little you use certain websites or apps as not everyone is impacted the same ways. Trading out long-form for short-form could have a huge impact on your well-being.
Revisit your core values. If you haven’t done one of these exercises in awhile or ever, now is a great time! At the end of the year, these are really likely to shift and change for you.
Stay compassionate to reality. This is the time of the year where, if you work in the service industry, it is the biggest and most stressful time. Go easy on yourself and create boundaries that are compassionate to the time and place you are in, rather than an unrealistic ideal.
Treat slip-ups with kindness. I still have plenty of days where no matter how bad I know it is for me, I will spend three hours scrolling YouTube or Substack. Then, the next day I reevaluate. Again, we’re humans. When I’m sick, having a pain flare up, or exhausted, I often find myself doing this. But, once I’m back to an equilibrium I’ll spend the next few days recognizing triggers and developing strategies to avoid them in the future.
Do this in community with others. While productivity-bros will tell you that change and habits are things that you have to implement on your own in a hyper-individualized self-improvement culture way, they’re wrong! Having friends who are likeminded to hold you accountable and also to simply respect your boundaries is so important.
My partner that I mentioned earlier will give me a judgey look if I try to show him a meme from an app I am supposed to be avoiding, or one that he is genuinely avoiding too. Gentle nudges and reminders from your friends and family can help keep you out of a doom-loop.
Communicate kindly with your favorite senders and recipients that you’re taking a break — and that texting the links is not ideal too. Having friends send you short form videos constantly and then getting upset when you don’t respond is a recipe for disaster. Instead, setup phone calls to catch up when they reach out and find ways to deepen your connection and even work on something creative together!
If you liked this dispatch, you would probably really enjoy going through The Hikers Way which is my self-guided pod-class program to help you connect more deeply with your inner artist while out in nature. You can learn all about that here.
I also recommend going through the archive of my writing and seeing if more of it resonates. I just passed two years of writing here on Substack and there are some real gems on here! Especially this piece I recently wrote about AI Sobriety.
If you want hands on support for your creative practice this winter, I also offer custom retreat experiences designed to support your intentional time away from techand one-on-one craft tutoring sessions where I can support your particular winter creative practice directly with live support.
That’s all I have for free in this dispatch. Below the paywall here I have some additional creative prompts for my paid subscribers inspired by the tarot. If you’d like to see them, but can’t afford to become a monthly paid subscriber right now, buy me a coffee and then send me an email at persistentbloom@gmail.com!
Until next time, Stay creative and find your own ways to persistently bloom.
