When I was meditating yesterday, the idea that I needed to spend less time on my phone surfaced. It’s always there, floating around, the notion that I would be better off spending less time on the internet, scrolling on my phone, reading the news, posting updates. I gravitate towards posts where people talk about giving up social media or taking a break from all things digital or even simply cutting down the amount of time they spend looking at a screen. I spend a lot of time contemplating how to do it, what I’d be missing or giving up if I did.

I made myself laugh sitting on my meditation cushion because I thought to myself, “I could make a rule that I can only be on social media if I’m standing up, because when I sit down, I get too comfortable and waste too much time.” I’ve done it before, made rules for myself, like the one where I could only use Facebook or Instagram on my laptop or desktop but had to take the apps off my phone. At night, I try sitting either at the dining room table or on a spot on the couch that’s not as comfortable thinking that will make me spend less time, go to bed sooner to read a book instead. The only rule that’s been somewhere close to consistent is to not take my phone to bed at night, but even that gets broken if Eric is gone or I’m sleeping in the other room because I’m sick or I’m staying at someone else’s house or in a hotel or even at the hospital.

After I was done meditating and came in to write, I scribbled in my journal, “I bet you could come up with a funny list of ways to manage your social media use, reduce time on your phone.” I started one, and as I went, I thought, “I should post this on Facebook” and then it got longer and I was surprised that I could think of so many and after filling three pages, front and back, decided to make it a blog post, starting the list with my original idea.

• Only use social media while you are standing. To up the difficulty, do squats the whole time.
• Freeze your phone in a block of ice like a credit card you don’t want to use. You can’t access it unless you take it out and wait for it to unthaw.
• Store your phone in the belly of a whale or a pit of alligators or a box of snakes.
• Smear it in peanut butter and give it to your dog. Don’t take it back until the dog has licked it clean.
• Bake it into a cake and the person who finds it in their slice is king for the day.
• Snail mail it to yourself.
• Wrap it like a present with a tag that reads, “Don’t open until Christmas!”
• Wrap it in a small box, then wrap that in a slightly larger box, and that in an even bigger box, and keep going until you have it all in a giant box. You can only use it after opening all the boxes, and after one hour, you have to wrap it up the same way again until tomorrow.
• Any time you catch yourself reaching for your phone, drink a glass of water first or chew some gum.
• Take a walk but forget to take your phone, and when you realize you don’t have it, keep on walking.
• Have your partner or roommate hide it from you. You can only use it if you can find it.
• Write a 500 word essay answering the question, “why can’t I stay away from my phone?”
• Write “I am a human being not a robot. I don’t need my phone as much as I think I do” 1000 times.
• Join a gym where phones aren’t allowed. Apply for a job there or become a personal trainer or fitness instructor.
• Wear a shock collar that delivers a zing any time you get within two feet of your phone.
• Get a squirt bottle and fill it with cold water and a few ice cubes to keep it cold. Squirt yourself in the face a few times any time you reach for your phone.
• Create a “phone zone” in your house and designate it as the only place you can use your phone. I recommend a 1 X 1 foot spot (standing room only) in the darkest corner of your garage or any spot that is always either too hot or too cold.
• Make a rule that you can use your phone only while listening to “Baby Shark” on repeat with headphones on and the volume way up.
• Make a deal that for every 10 minutes on your phone you have to do 20 pushups and 20 squats. This way even if you spend too much time on your phone, you’ll at least be physically stronger.
• Install a device that will self-destruct your phone if you are on it for longer than 20 minutes.
• You can only use your phone while wearing swim goggles, a snorkel, nose and ear plugs, and swim fins. To up the difficulty, add a wetsuit.
• Plant a massive low growing bushy cactus near your house and throw your phone into it.
• Befriend a murder of crows and teach them to attack any time they see you on your phone.
• Make a rule you can only use your phone in your backyard — no exemptions or exceptions for weather.
• You can only use your phone while walking across a bed of hot coals.
• Smear butter all over your phone or soak it in tuna. No fair wearing gloves or nose plugs when you use your phone next.
• Install a device that will shock you and make you wet your pants every time you touch your phone.
• Somehow develop an allergy to your phone. Maybe not deathly allergic but enough that you’d be really uncomfortable — runny nose, itchy eyes, sneezing.
• Teach your dog to alert any time you are on your phone. Whatever behaviors are most distracting and annoying to you, such as constant barking or whining, or pawing at your hands or licking your face or tugging at your pant leg.
• No phone before 10 am or after 5 pm or between the hours of 10:30 am and 4:30 pm.
• Only use your phone every other day and never on weekends.
• If anyone else is in the room or even the building, including pets, you can’t use your phone. In this case, if you don’t already have a pet, adopt one so you are never alone.
• Change everything on your phone, including the keyboard, to a language you don’t understand.
• Keep your phone outside on your front step or porch at night while you sleep. If it’s still there in the morning, you can use it for one hour and one hour only.
• Only use your non-dominant hand when scrolling or typing. If you are ambidextrousness, either tie one hand behind your back or only use your nose.
• Get a cat who won’t let you touch it, always runs and hides, won’t come when you call it. Put your phone in a tiny back pack and have the cat carry it around. You can only use your phone if you can catch the cat and hold it long enough to get into the backpack. No fair harming the cat in any way trying to catch it or keep it still.
• Buy an elaborate puzzle box that is almost impossible to solve and store your phone inside.

Okay, that’s as many as I could come up with. Do you have anything you’d add to the list?

1. Some thoughts on black history month from Karen Walrond on Chookooloonks.

2. Leaning Into Uncomfortable Conversations: How avoiding conflict can cause more conflict from Andrea Gibson. “It’s also difficult to become a genuinely empathetic person while having no interest in what is at the emotional root of another person’s values and opinions.”

3. Is Everything an MLM? on Culture Study from Anne Helen Petersen. The discussion here of both yoga teacher training (“CorePower’s business model is contingent upon enrolling thousands in expensive ‘teacher training’ courses, even though there’s already a surfeit of teachers out there. The company makes money from the teacher training, and teachers’ own labor becomes devalued, as they’re encouraged to teach for less or teach for donations (appealing to yogic principles of service and selflessness as a means of excusing it)”) and academia (“The Humanities…have massive numbers of undergraduate courses that need teaching. In English programs, it’s some version of ‘comp,’ or composition…Many of these courses are mandated ‘core’ in some capacity, ensuring an unwavering stream of students, and an unwavering demand for graduate student labor to serve them”) rings so true to me, having experienced both myself.

4. Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler from 28 Days of Black History.

5. How to help earthquake survivors in Turkey and Syria: Earthquakes Struck the Heart of the World’s Largest Refugee Population. Here’s How to Help, and How to make sure your donation will do the most good for earthquake survivors, and Here’s how to help victims of the earthquake on The New York Times.

6. Amid DeSantis attacks, AP African American studies course is updated.

7. The Lion’s Roar Podcast: The Practice of Writing with Natalie Goldberg. “Zen practitioner, painter, and author of fifteen books, Natalie Goldberg, talks to Lion’s Roar editor Andrea Miller about how writing can be a practice of studying your mind.”

8. Miranda Rights? Wrong! — Dharma Teaching and the Degradation of Tyre Nichols on Lion’s Roar. “In response to the police killing of Tyre Nichols, an unarmed Black man arrested in Memphis, TN on January 7, Pamela Ayo Yetunde looks at how the tenets of Buddhism might be applied to understand the suffering of police brutality. This article is presented as part of Lion’s Roar’s collaboration with Buddhist Justice Reporter, — founded by BIPOC Buddhist practitioners in response to the police torture and murder of George Floyd. BJR publishes articles on issues related to environmental, racial, and social justice and its intersections, from an anti-racist Buddhist lens.”

9. Most people (and the people you choose) from Seth Godin.

10. 52 Things To Declutter From Your Life Today from Courtney Carver on Be More With Less.

11. Staying in the Canyon, a poem from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. This poem describes me: I am the tree.

12. You Don’t Have to Be Complicit in Our Culture of Destruction an interview with Robin Wall Kimmerer on The New York Times.

13. Hear Me Out: Walking Is a Way To Get To Know Ourselves Better.

14. 5 Self-Care Resolutions For A More Grounded Year. This article is pre-COVID, which makes it seem ancient, but I can’t disagree with these suggestions, even now.

15. Recipes I want to try: Broccoli Cheese and Potato Soup and Blackberry Turnovers.

16. We Can’t Be Productive Every Day—So Why Do We Continue to Glorify It?

17. Good stuff from Austin Kleon: Going through the motions and A library of words.

18. The life and the work are equally important. “Let’s face it—artists are always working, though they may not seem as if they are. They are like plants growing in winter. You can’t see the fruit, but it is taking root below the earth.”

19. Are there places you should still mask in, forever? Three experts weigh in.

20. It’s Time To Stop Using Dryer Sheets In Your Laundry. Here’s Why.

21. Please, God, Help Me Stop Missing Her, part of the Modern Love series on The New York Times. “As an ultra-Orthodox Jew, I tried to ‘pray my gay away.’ It didn’t work.”

22. Encountering the Shadow in Buddhist America. “Following the recent allegations at Shambhala International, we take a look back at a 1990 article that investigated the troubling legacy of its first two heads and established a precedent for Buddhist journalism.” In related news, Survivors of an International Buddhist Cult Share Their Stories. “An investigation into decades of abuse at Shambhala International.” These are both older articles but I was thinking recently of my ten years with Shambhala — raging and grieving mostly.

23. Doctors Aren’t Burned Out From Overwork. We’re Demoralized by Our Health System. on The New York Times. “The United States is the only large high-income nation that doesn’t provide universal health care‌ to its citizens. Instead, it maintains a lucrative system of for-profit medicine. For decades, ‌at least tens of thousands of preventable deaths have occurred each year because health care here is so expensive…During the Covid-19 pandemic, the consequences of this policy choice have intensified. One study estimates at least 338,000 Covid deaths in the United States could have been prevented by universal health care. In the wake of this generational catastrophe, many health care workers have been left shaken.”

24. Hand-Dyed Paper Seeds Flow Through Sculptural Landscapes and Portraits by Ilhwa Kim.

25. Anthony Theakston’s Elegant Sculptures Imbue Ceramics and Bronze with Avian Spirit.

26. Japanese Chef Has Filled Notebooks with Delectable Illustrations of All of His Meals for 32 Years.

27. On Being with Krista Tippett: Dacher Keltner | The Thrilling New Science of Awe. (podcast)

28. 44 Body Liberation Books by Black Authors for Black History Month.

29. The Benefits of Journaling from Tammy Strobel on Be More With Less.

30. The village destroyed to build central park: Seneca Village. (Instagram reel)

31. Marjorie Taylor Greene Got An Earful About Chris Stapleton’s ‘Wokeness’ After She Slammed The Black National Anthem. Watch both: “Lift Every Voice and Sing” Performed by Sheryl Lee Ralph and Chris Stapleton Sings the National Anthem. In related news, Super Bowl LVII Commercials 2023 Compilation.