Contrast post from a similar experiment last year: no creation what now.
I was entirely offline for almost 6 weeks, in large part to write the first draft of a novel. Which I (mostly, complicatedly) succeeded at.
I was happy every day. But otherwise it was nothing like I’d expected “going offline to successfully write a novel” to be like in my many past attempts to attain this exact state.
My self esteem is normally like 70% what people think of me and 30% the quality of the things I make. When it became 1% and 99%, things got quite strange in my head. I have three partners and a toddler and it still felt like I was somehow microdosing solitary confinement.
I was annoying and a little crazy. I had one group chat left, and my guess is that I lost a few friendship points with most of the people there because I was spamming it with low quality updates. Once my posting became decoupled from rapid feedback and the high stakes of a 100+ readers, I sort of lost the ability to discern or care whether I was delighting others. I could see this happening but I was unable to stop it.
I stopped blogging on my non social media blog because I was writing long, bad drafts. Writing all this in the Tumblr editor feels different. I don’t want to waste your time. If I do, the numbers will tell me. I’m rereading this post right now, scanning for typos with an intensity I forgot I could feel. I’m not forcing myself to tighten this post. It doesn’t take willpower to want to write a good post. Thank fucking GOD.
Still, for most of those 6 weeks, the thought of coming back online viscerally disgusted me.
I was lonely. I started a hermitudinous August partly because I had worked myself into a state of crazed social overstimulation from which I needed a hard break. But four weeks in I started wanting to see people again. A few days ago I left the house and chatted with an acquaintance with more fervor than I was able to give any friend in the past year.
I was exquisitely happy. During the past 6 weeks, my first waking thought was “I have an idea for how to fix that scene or plot problem”. (Usually it’s a bleary horrified “oh god, I’m conscious? I’m a conscious being??”) I shambled through the day, fearing that I was going crazy, that I was neglecting my child, that I was like this forever now and would never have a social life again. But at every point I also felt that this was one of the best months of my life.