Disconnection

skis and delusion

Connection requires disconnection.

As sometimes happens when I’m journaling, phrases and words appear to bubble up from the ether. This was one of those times. Connection requires disconnection. I’m not entirely sure where it came from or the exact context. But something about it rang true as my pen scribbled across the page. In the moment I didn’t really unpack it. I just let it sit there, ringing out its truthiness. It’s been rattling around my brain ever since.

Seeing as it’s December I’ve begun reflecting on my word for 2023. As I’m absolutely sure you remember, in lieu of New Year’s resolutions, I pick a yearly word. To be totally fair it feels like the word picks me. This word serves as a mantra and an anchor. It’s a checkpoint to assess how I’m moving throughout life that year. A framework for choices and intention. Every few days, weeks, months, the word will pop up like a friendly neighbor checking in on me. This works better than resolutions which feel more like an angry HOA meeting.

This year’s word was reconnection. When the word and I found each other I was excited to explore what exactly it meant. This time last year there were several things I felt I’d lost connection to - my body, my sexuality, my spirituality, my creativity, my love of reading, my sense of fun, old friends, former hobbies, etc. I had devoted so much of 2022 to producing a TV pilot that I’d lost some other important touch points. Something was amiss and I needed recalibration to find it again in 2023.

A prime example of how ‘reconnection’ manifested itself this year is my writing practice. In the early PDW days, my writing practice was robust albeit a little chaotic. I was so eager to put out words. As long-time readers might remember, I would drop these massive 2,500 word essays. Big ol’ clunkers. Whether they were any good (they often weren’t) was irrelevant. The goal back then was quantity over quality.

As the years went on, that PDW consistency waxed and waned. To be fair to former me it wasn’t that I wasn’t writing. I was writing other things - namely a book and an entire first season of a TV show. But the cyclical and persistent nature of a writing practice got lost in the shuffle. Reconnecting to that became important again. Starting on February 3rd of this year I published something every week for 42 weeks straight. Some weeks might have been anemic but at least they were present every Friday morning at 6 a.m. EST. (except for last week lol)

What I’ve come to understand about ‘connection requires disconnection’ is that, whether intended or not, we are always plugged into something. Our energy is finite and we expend it somewhere. Even if your days are spent laying on the couch staring at the ceiling, you are connected to certain ideas about yourself and how you fit in the world. You are connected to your body in a particular way and to ideas of self-worth. You are also connected to that couch.

It came late in the year, this idea that sprang forth from my journaling, but I realized that in order to reconnect to something I need to disconnect from something else. If I wanted to reconnect to my love of reading I would have to disconnect from things that took me away from reading. If I wanted to reconnect to my body I would need to disconnect from whatever obstacles, namely numbing, that I clung onto. Much like a lamp can only be plugged into one outlet at a time, we humans operate the same way. At least I do.

A perfectly practical example of this comes from Arianna Huffington. The media mogul tells the story of giving away her skis. For years and years she claimed to have kept a pair of skis in the house along with various skiing accouterments. She held out hope that one day she would get serious about becoming a great skier. The dust accumulated as the skis went untouched. Day after day she looked at them with shame and longing. Finally in a fit of clarity she got them out of the house and gave them away. She realized the idea of becoming a better skier wasn’t aspirational, it was delusional. And with the newly freed space, both physical and mental, she was able to fill it with something else, something she loved.

That to me is ‘connection requires disconnection’ in action. I spend so much time holding onto ideas and habits and decisions that don’t serve me at the expense of things that do serve me. I cling to delusion in place of growth and joy and meaning. In place of real aspiration. I find myself connected to things that harm me or simply eat up my time when I could be connected to things that fortify me and make meaning of my time. Connection requires disconnection.

So as I search the verbiage landscape for 2024’s word, I hope to carry with me the lessons from this year. I sincerely hope I’m not connected to delusion and waste when that word crosses my path. I hope I’m free, available, and disconnected enough to see that word as it strolls on by.