I Don't Think My Phone is My Friend

or: I resolve to get worse at getting back to people

The news this week is awful, and it feels strange to post about anything other than what’s happening in the world. But I don’t know that I specifically have a lot to say about this new war, not yet. I cut my teeth on the anti-war protests of 2002 and 2003, but frankly none of us—not the big sign-holding marches, nor the kids in black breaking out recruitment center windows—met with much success or seemed to have much of an impact. It was probably still worth doing, but even what little lessons I could glean from that time feel like they’re likely irrelevant in the current era. We were trying to stop a neoconservative government in 2003. I 2026 we’re trying to stop a fascist government.

When in doubt, I tend to recommend the work of CrimethInc, and their analysis here seems solid (the whole article is worth reading).

Unpopular wars without a clear mandate—especially wars that result in US casualties or other sacrifices at home—can spell downfall for a regime. It is our task to turn this war—along with Trump’s other errors, and the wars to come—into a millstone around the neck of the entire ruling class. It will require so much popular force to dislodge Trump that we should popularize similarly ambitious proposals—not simply demand a return to an unpopular centrist status quo.

Anyway, I feel some tension writing about anything else, and I’m sure I’ll have more to say on these issues. But that’s not what I wrote about this week. I wrote about attention, instead.

I Don’t Think My Phone is My Friend

I don’t think my phone is my friend. There’s a distraction device in my pocket and it buzzes and chimes and gives me information whether or not I want that information, and I don’t think that it has my best interests at heart.

I love seeing messages from loved ones. I love being able to look up product reviews while I’m in the store. I love podcasts and audiobooks. I love wikipedia; god bless wikipedia. But when I leave my phone in the couch cushions by accident, I sure get more writing done.

Which means, indirectly, one of my goals for 2026 is to become harder to reach.

When texting took over phone calls as the default mode for remote communication, it felt like freedom. Asynchronous communication. No longer would I have to interrupt everything I was doing every time someone had a question, because no one expected a response right away. I could get to it later. Communication wouldn’t have to break my attention.

I’m beginning to think that text messages are the “buy now, pay later” of the attention world. Buying things on credit is convenient and dangerous, and it’s easy to fall deep into debt, into a vicious cycle from which you never emerge.

After diligently spending an hour in bed this morning reading messages, I still have 103 unread emails in four accounts, 54 unread Signal messages (many of them from people I love dearly), a couple messages in Bluesky that I will simply never read, a dozen or so messages here on Substack that I probably will read, I just might not get back to, and don’t even get me started on my Instagram messages. If someone messaged me through regular SMS, well, god be with them, because I won’t be.

I don’t think I’m in any way unique. Because I do public-facing work, I’ve probably got more messages from strangers than the average person, but the thing is—messages from my friends and family languish in my inbox too.

I’ve tried for years to maintain an inbox zero. I’ll probably continue pushing the rock up the email hill. But it’s simply too much, and I don’t think it’s good for me. I thought asynchronous communication would free my attention, but instead, every unread (or unresponded-to) message just chips away at my brain and my ability to focus. The cliched “death my a thousand cuts.” I find myself preferring to catch up over the phone—an hour of conversation every few months feels a lot more connected than the endless slow game of texting “how’ve you been?”

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For whatever undiagnosed reason, I struggle in loud environments with a lot of noises all going on at once. When I watch movies with people, I have to pause the movie if someone starts talking. I don’t like a loud car stereo playing in the background when I’m trying to talk with someone in the car, and honestly a quiet stereo might be even worse. I listen to music or books when I drive alone, until I get too lost in thought—then I need to pause the music.

My own personal hell is a crowded bar with multiple TVs playing multiple shows while everyone yells louder than each other to be heard over the music and the din.

I mostly write in silence. It’s so quiet as I write this that I can hear my dog breathing. It’s also so quiet though that I can hear my shower dripping—just another reminder of the infinite to-do list of life.

If I’m writing somewhere with a lot of distraction, some public place perhaps, I listen to loud music to drown everything else out. Usually something repetitive and heavy like doom metal.

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I’m skeptical of anyone, or any movement, that romanticizes the past. Anyone fantasizing about the “simpler days” probably takes the existence of antibiotics for granted or hasn’t spent quite as much time as I have reading about person after person who died young of tuberculosis.

I’m skeptical of people romanticizing the past, but I do it too. I think there genuinely was something better when “the internet” came through a box plugged into the wall in our living rooms and cell phones only let you call people. Because I don’t think being in constant contact with thousands of people is good for us. I don’t think it’s good for our self-esteem, and I don’t think it’s good for our attention spans.

I think attention is a muscle that develops through exercise and atrophies when unpracticed.

I’ve got a little hierarchy in my head of what sort of entertainment I can engage with, depending on how strong my attention span is at that moment. Long books, poetry, short books, short stories, long form essays, old movies, new movies, tv shows, video games, doomscrolling, in descending order. (Oddly, podcasts sit outside this hierarchy because I listen to podcasts while I’m cleaning the house or driving or doing something else). I engage with all of these, and this isn’t some call for everyone to quit looking at their phones in order to read War & Peace, but for fuck’s sake I’d like to imagine a version of me where one day I’ll actually read War & Peace. I spend so long in my day job engaging with Tolstoy (he is a side character in almost every story about European radicals at the turn of the 20th century) that I’d really like to know more of what he had to say than what his short stories have to offer.

But to sit down to read, you can’t have a million distractions.

And I’m sorry to say, being reachable all the time is one of those distractions. Not just because of the buzzing in my pocket, but because of the avalanche of backlogged messages that builds up quickly when we step away from our laptops and phones.

I actually looked into getting a landline put into my house, so I could turn off my phone and wifi for a couple days at a time but still be reachable in emergencies, but getting a landline is a pretty expensive proposition. So instead, I will rely on discipline.

The discipline to leave my phone in my couch cushions for twelve hours at a time. The discipline to leave people on read. The discipline to get shittier at communicating with people.

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Now, to be clear I don’t want everyone to leave me alone. I love hearing from readers and listeners. It keeps me going, sometimes, like maybe I’m not a total fuckup, because something I did ten years ago is still helping people today. I love my friends, and I love that a lifetime of activism and wandering has left me with so many people that I care about, whose days and dreams and struggles and victories I want to hear about.

Buried in my inbox are genuine connections with people I love. Buried in my inbox are once in a lifetime opportunities to do amazing work. Buried in my inbox are incredible essays from brilliant authors whose work I love.

I don’t know where the balance is, of turning on and off access to information and connection.

I hope, this year, to come closer to finding it.

And yeah, I know the irony of ending this with a subscribe button. But if you want to read more of what I have to say, that’s a good way to do it.