Not to be confused with:
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
Nothing against Mark Manson, I tried listening to the audiobook of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and no más. Couldn’t get into it. I’m down with his belief, struggle gives us character, skip the positivity prose and go straight to embracing the suck, but there’s a fly in the ointment of his anti-self-help sentiment.
He sounds as intense and convinced of his messaging as every other self-help book I’ve read/listened to in the last decade. Which, cool. No shame in the game. Everyone needs that special someone who can jolt them out of crappy habits, but if you aren’t looking for a hardcore bout of “you are not special” deprogramming, might I suggest an alternative:
The “I Don’t Give a BLEEP” Wednesday
This smaller slice of humble pie does not require a multi-step process, nor does it trigger a psychological stripping of the nuanced senses. In essence, you pick one day a week and un-attach yourself from everything that wants your attention. This will look different for every person, but it’s fair to say, the majority of energy-sucking will happen via an electronic screen: phone, television, computer, watches, interactive appliances, etc. If you avoid staring at electronics, you’ll reap the benefits of time-awareness, peace, and eventually, a feeling of well-being that reminds you, “Oh yeah, I’m supposed to feel good.”
It’s a BLEEP day, not to be confused with other expletives, and it really, really works. To see how I “un-attach,” below is a sample of a normal Wednesday…
I wake up naturally. No alarm clock. If I’m late for something, I’m late, but I’m never late. In fact, I’m remarkably early when rolling out of bed. My body doesn’t have to rush, my mind doesn’t have to worry, and my heart is light. This is probably because I have cleared the day of pressing meetings. Unless it’s an emergency, my tribe knows I cannot be reached unless they drive to my house and knock on the door.
Still, I reach for the phone. Oops. Put that down.
After starting the coffee, I journal those wonderful moments of first realization — I am awake! But my consciousness is lingering in dreams. I can talk to myself and get the juicy gossip of what’s happening under the surface before the other me jumps into survival and ego maintenance.
Would I be able to do this if I immediately checked my socials? Hell no. Vanity and insecurity demand I see what everyone else is doing so I know what I should be doing. That girl, the precious inner child, she’s long gone the second I start scrolling Instagram. Pushed into the shadows and ignored.
Included in offline time, I can read as much as I want, write as much as I want (longhand), create art, nap, read some more, and do things with my hands because there’s energy. There’s imagination.
Shopping or spending money, made too easy now that everything has an app, is a big no-no. Because I’m not distracting myself with advanced hunter-gatherer impulses (or as I like to say, being a gunter), there’s plenty of time to tackle remedial tasks not cemented in “progress.” This means I clean, organize, cook advanced recipes, dance to music in my head, hem a blouse, sketch, doodle, and go crazy with the metaphysical Cheez Wiz.
I’m aware I’m being sent electronic interference (especially in the form of emails, texts, and group chats), but I like to imagine the noisy bits are collecting in a box floating in space. If the messages get sucked up by a spiral galaxy and are lost to me forever, it’s not a big deal. Whatever I need to know, someone will eventually tell me.
If I slow down for too long, my mind flashes me dirty pics of things I’m supposed to avoid — a deck building video game called Inscryption, adding specialty protein bars to my Amazon cart, listening to my favorite podcasts The Creative Penn and The Joe Rogan Experience, and catching up on my YouTube influencers. What are they doing? Who are they talking to? What are they buying? What are they selling? It’s trash, really, but understandable filth, the likes of which I need to feel inspired and connected to people “doing” things.
Yes, the mind, overstimulated and desperate for dopamine, is spreading its trench coat on a bus headed nowhere and yelling, “Look at me! Here’s all the stuff you’re supposed to squeeze into your day, knowing none of it will truly satisfy you. Heh heh heh.”
The things have a time and place, but if I let them control every second of my life, they distract me from having a relationship with ME. Wonder why. What do I do? Pick up a scrub brush and tackle the scum line on my bathtub. If I am going to be flashed by anything, I want it to sparkle.
Around noon, I sneak to the gym for an hour of sweating cause I paid for the damn month, and I need to wear the damn leggings a buff 25-year-old fitness girl recommended. Because I’m not listening to music or people chatter, I have time to drive and think about said leggings.
There are so many legging companies out there. A tidal wave of leggings. I do need help finding the right ones. I get it. The makeup techs and dental hygienists and fashion students, they’re filling a niche in consumerism labeled “before my hormones crashed.”
I almost feel sorry for them. Not long ago, I too looked good in naked selfie pics. I ate junk food from cardboard boxes, lived on energy drinks, and believed my metabolism wouldn’t slow down prematurely. After all, I took preventive drugs like omega-3 fatty acid and chewed nicotine gum for my “brain health.” It’s never too late to wrap neurons is a fresh coat of fat or use caffeine’s cousin to jump-start the cerebral cortex like a car battery.
When I was a child, I didn’t think about moisturizing my neck. As a teenager, it was Ponds and Neutrogena. As a mid-sized adult, I started to think about wrinkles and jowls. I put more money on the line for organic safety and protection. When you’re old, worry is a second job. The price of worry will continue to go up until it suddenly stops. How old am I? Old enough to plan ahead. The price of my face cream tells me so.
This is supposed to be my day off. I don’t have to think about who I follow or why, but even when I’m not connected, I’m still being influenced. Still thinking about the Mint mobile ads, HelloFresh endorsements, still grinding my teeth over how many times I’m forced to endure Steve Austin pushing cold Tide pods because I refuse to pay for premium Spotify.
Considered how often I’m sold to, it’s a wonder I have any self-control left to marvel (and slightly freak out), if I didn’t disconnect on a regular basis, I doubt I’d get a taste of how brainwashed I am.
Driving home from the gym, more thinking. What strange impulse made me pick Wednesday to go offline? Tuesday has tacos, Friday has casual wear, and God called dibs on Sunday awhile back, unless you follow the Hebrew “No Work Saturday” policy, which makes my dedication seem pathetic and half-ass.
Also known as Hump Day, Wednesday means most of the 9-to-5 world is halfway to a fake destination called The Weekend (not to be confused with The Weeknd). Made-up weekend phenomena do not impress. Sleep in, do nothing, drink, forget about a job that pays the bills but isn’t satisfying outside of providing the bottom rung of Maslow’s hierarchy, and pray Sunday doesn’t end. It’s the light at the end of the tunnel that happens to be an oncoming train. In other words, it’s a conspiracy.
Since I don’t have to rush, I sit in the shower and feel good about my body, a miracle of cellular cooperation that rarely gets attention for existing beyond how I look in, you guessed it, leggings. I love this body. It’s mine, but it’s not. Like a book I borrowed from the library, I hope to keep extending the renewal period, but know I must give back at some point. From the binding to the quality of the pages, front to back, every line and white space is considered.
The day peaks. Full from a lunch I mindfully eat one bite at a time (instead of scarfing while watching tutorials on SEO), it’s around 2 P.M. I forgot how much I had to say that belongs to me. It’s not a regurgitated idea, the latest medical study, or what I read on someone’s blog. The strange energy I almost labeled anxiety is what my heart normally tries to tell me between meals, driving to appointments, and when walking without earphones.
No food or drink can compare to the clarity of knowing thyself. No book or movie or influencer’s tearful admission can move me as deeply as that of my own mind’s gratitude. Of course, I know it’s because it’s coming from me, and I have all my answers. The problem is, I can only hear them when the rest of the world is silent.
I am reminded, oh yes, this is what it’s like to be loved by time. Rewarded for sitting out of the game, just for a breather, to chat with a strange friend that happens to be my soul.
Some Wednesdays aren’t epic. They don’t refill my wells to bursting like the scene I describe above. I think maybe this is because I try to cram too many non-essential things into the mix. For instance, last week I went to the thrift store. I didn’t buy anything, but the energy of other peoples’ memories felt sticky, like everything had a voice and talking points.
Just as well. If I venture out, it will be on bare soil. Nature.
Toward dinner time, my man is watching the Olympics. I pick up a book. I’ve had it for three years, sitting in the same stack, gathering dust. It’s great or it isn’t, I’m not sure after reading for twenty minutes. Any other time, I’d skim the first couple pages and bail if the narration wasn’t shouting from a shock value megaphone. Which is a shame. Some of the best stories are slow to start and require a gritty reader’s intellect to pick up the subliminal threads.
I’ve forgotten how to read as long as I want. I’ve forgotten how it used to consume me, how I’d curl up in the bathroom long after bedtime so my mom would think I was going potty, nothing unusual, if she happened to get up in the night. My god, that girl had everything. Cold, uncomfortable, and numb from the knees down, she had the world in the palm of her hands.
I worry, briefly. What about the kids who are plugged in 24/7? Do they know their own voices? Can they find the silence? Is listening to your heart still a thing, or have we killed it by talking about it too much? I can afford to worry. With nothing to do and nowhere to go, I can think of others, their pleasures and pains, and send them a prayer not compromised by how the success and failure of the world will affect me.
Don’t think I haven’t worked today. This is the tricky part about taking your attention back. You have no idea how much energy you have when it’s truly yours to spend.
By the time I’m in bed, sipping Beam tea (it’s freaking amazing if you like dreaming), I’ve outlined the next two days of work, made meticulous, copious notes on a trilogy I’m releasing this year, meal prepped, cleaned the bathrooms, mopped the kitchen, had slow, fun sex with my dude, finished reading A Moveable Feast, and played with makeup because I felt like it.
This brings me to the paradox of why I wished to go offline one day a week.
If something isn’t telling me what to do and how to feel about it, am I real?
This isn’t the Matrix talking. I was sixteen when I got my first cellphone. I had a life before digital lassoing. I could do fractions in my head. I could be bored. In that boredom, I thought about what was real and what wasn’t.
Before I over-committed to a job, family, friends, social ladder, and fifteen other critical necessities, I didn’t have to ask for input on what I liked or wanted to do. I’ve heard this referred to as “being spoiled.” What a blessing now, to think of boredom as lack of anxiety.
Once upon a time, I didn’t care if I was spoiled, privileged, educated, valued, important, pretty, desirable, or memorable. I didn’t even care if my parents wanted me. Obviously, they did. A child doesn’t wonder if they’re loved when there’s plenty of love to go around. Love is what we had. Not fancy cars, flashy jewelry, or private educations. We had love and time.
These are beautiful thoughts to end a beautiful Hump Day, but what lingers is a quote I jotted down and mistakenly forgot to include the name or author in my note.
Whatever value (such as popularity) not under a person’s control is a bad value to have, and a person should strive to replace it with something more controllable such as punctuality, honesty, or kindness.
I love this thought. It’s not my thought, but it resonates with what I believe, and why I bother with lengthy, non-punctual diatribes. Technically, it rounds out a non-tech day. It might even be at the center of why I couldn’t read Mark Manson’s book, believing like any good psychology student, if you say a thing too loudly, you’re advocating for its existence.
For instance, “not giving a f*ck” is a lie. It’s self-deception. Those that say they don’t care (like myself), care very, very much. They care so much they almost can’t take it anymore. They have to go offline.
Tossing and turning, I don’t know where the quote came from, but I know it’s important. I could wait for the morning, yes, but this day has been about wrestling a bit of control from an over-analyzing, undervalued attention-seeking life.
So I reach for my phone and Google the quote. It’s from Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. I’ll be darned. I should be miffed, I suppose. Or use this as an excuse to give the book another try. Instead, giggling, I get out of bed and put my phone in my office. I’m irrationally happy, and everything is going to be okay. Full circle. Even if it’s not, it’s still Wednesday.
On Wednesday, I don’t give a BLEEP.
