I was offline for 30 days.

I still had to use the internet for work, but I removed all apps from my phone, didn't use any streaming services (I borrowed DVDs from the public library!), and avoided all social media.

For context, I'm a content creator (~ internet stuff maker~) who has followings on Instagram, TikTok, Threads, Twitter, BlueSky, YouTube, Twitch and Kofi. And I ~make stuff~ for all of those platforms as a second, part-time job and hobby. I'm pretty locked in to The Feed. So taking a month offline wasn't just about unplugging from the constant input, it was also about taking a break from the constant output.

During my month off I did a lot of stuff:
- I repainted my bathroom
- I reorganized my closets (including getting bins, putting all my bits into bins, and putting little labels on the bins)
- I read (most of) 10 books
- I started hiking again (I've been in physio for a knee dislocation, but I'm finally able to do easy hikes! I did 3)
- I made a Star Trek TNG fansite wheregnomeannehasgonebefore.neocities.org
- I wrote another 10 000 words in my Star Trek TNG fan fic
- ... I watched a season of Star Trek TNG
- I journaled. I did "morning pages" for a couple weeks, but continued to journal in a less regimented way the whole time
- I started a new certification program for my job. I did the first 3 (of 12) components
- I voted in a federal election
- I did my taxes myself (they are ~very complicated~)

I'm devastated to report that I feel so, so much better when I'm not chronically online. It turns out *literally everyone* was correct. But in addition to better emotional regulation and, in some ways, productivity, I noticed another major change: better social battery.

I have become used to being treated like shit. I *expect* people to half-listen when I talk just to fight me on mundane statement. I *expect* people to ask seemingly innocent questions that are actually passive aggressive attempts to waste my time, energy, and patience. I *expect* people to talk about me, in front of me, like I'm not there. I *expect* people to occasionally yell slurs at me. This is normal.

This is not normal.

Humans are incredibly adaptable. We can mould ourselves into seemingly impossible shapes, and manage to find some comfort in those contortions. Over time, stress becomes a background hum -- a background hum that erodes our organs and frays our well-being. It feels less like a fire and more like a dollop of arsenic in your morning coffee. *This is fine.*

But this is not fine.

Because as much as we are adaptable, we are equally social. Our survival has always depended on our community, and our acceptance in that community. Our nervous systems aren't meant to face this much interpersonal friction while we watch our social contract be gutted and sold for scraps.

The internet used to be a place. Like any other place, it was somewhere you went, and somewhere you left.

The internet is no longer a place. It follows me wherever I go. It's burrowed into my thought processes -- it haunts me even when I manage to leave. *The medium is the message*. These online patterns of communication and interpersonal bullshit don't just affect how I communicate online, but how I communicate in any context. Worse still, they affect how I think. How I communicate with myself.

I was doing my daily journaling, writing in a little notebook that I will never share with anyone, and I found myself hedging my statements. Anticipating misunderstandings. Anticipating bad faith responses. In my fucking *journal*. I call this Twitter-speak in my head, but it happens everywhere. Someone wants to share an idea, but they phrase it like: "I have a thought that I think is interesting but if you don't that's ok because everyone is different and my thought only reflects my worldview which is characterised by my own lived experiences" -- and then the thought it "I like grilled cheese" and someone replies "I'm lactose intolerant, you asshole." THIS IS NO WAY TO LIVE!

Nothing was meant to be shared with *everyone* in a way that *everyone* can understand. The audience for your idle thoughts was never supposed to be *all of humanity*. Context collapse isn't just a disruption of the social order, it's a fundamental rewiring of how humans communicate.

So what now?

I don't know. Honestly, I didn't want to rejoin the internet when my month off ended (... except that I wanted to talk about Star Trek more because I simply do not have feral enough fans to hang out with locally and my partner can't bear another info dump or literary analysis or discussion of camera movements). I know I missed streaming on Twitch, so I'll go back to that. But it's possible I'm done with short form (tiktok, instagram reels, yt shorts), at least for the foreseeable future. I'm going to keep social media off my phone. I want to invest more energy in Web 1.0 stuff, like my neocities websites, and less energy in social media. And I want to continue taking months off throughout the year so I don't just sucked back into the rhythm of The Feed: I'm thinking April, August and December. But this question is bigger than me, and I don't want to cheapen a social issue by framing it as my personal self-actualisation journey.

I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do going forward, but I know I'm going to have to try really, really hard to do it.