On going back to the real world

I'm taking a year off this platform, and I hope you will too

Fall is coming.

The other night, I was helping my daughter with her homework when I had a realization.

My daughter Lily is enrolled in a Vietnamese Immersion Program at a local elementary here in Portland

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, and has been since kindergarten. As a fourth grader this year, she gets homework, which are booklets of stories in Vietnamese. She has to translate them to the best of her ability and answer some basic questions about the story. The books, ironically, contain words that the kids don’t know yet (or don’t remember) so they have to figure it out on their own.

Naturally, we pored over the dictionary (the paper version) looking for words. Suddenly, I’m transported back to the past when I was about ten or eleven years old and learning English for the first time. I’m proud to say that I became fluent in just a year and a half, but that’s only because I had a dictionary and I used the hell out of it. I also read a lot of books and watched a lot of TV with subtitles. Whenever I came across a word I didn’t know, I’d highlight it, write it down, and look it up.

I had a method that worked, so I was trying to teach my daughter this.

“You don’t need to know every word,” I said. “First, pick out words you know the meaning of. Then the ones you don’t know, look it up. Select only words that appear to have more than basic meanings; in other words, nouns and verbs, not adjectives or adverbs.”

This whole process takes a while, as you can imagine. But after doing it a few times, you get an idea of which words or phrases are easily searchable in the dictionary and which ones are not.

While doing this, I realized, “This is kind of hard.” Even for someone like me, whose first language is Vietnamese. (Also, I thought, “Not bad for having only an elementary school education, I still understand a lot of stuff!”) For Lily, it’s much harder because a) she’s younger, b) Vietnamese is not her first language.

This is not a story about learning a language. It’s a story about learning, period.

When I realized that learning a new language is hard, I also realized how beneficial it is for our brains when we discover new things, and the excitement that follows.

In my senior year of college, I took German classes as part of my graduation requirements. The only reason I chose German was because it was only class that did not require a $100 textbook. Instead, it had a free e-book that a German professor had created, full of exercises, phrases and resources that were used in the class, taught by graduate students. I had such a great time learning German I felt sad when I couldn’t continue to second year because I was graduating.

I may be making an assumption here, but most of us stopped reading after we’re done with college. I’m talking about reading for fun, things you enjoy because you had to read so much in college that by the time you’re done, you feel burnt out and need a break. Completely understandable, but it’s also detrimental to our personal growth.

Go jump in a pile of leaves…or at least, get some fresh air!

Eduardo Briceño, founder of Mindset Works, a learning company, said in his TED talk, “How to get better at the things you care about” that the reason why many of us feel like we’re not improving even though we’ve been working so hard is because we go through life performing instead of learning. “What if, instead of spending our lives doing, doing, doing, performing, performing, performing, we spent more time exploring, asking, listening, experimenting, reflecting, striving and becoming?” he said. “What if we each always had something we were working to improve?”

“What if, instead of spending our lives doing, doing, doing, performing, performing, performing, we spent more time exploring, asking, listening, experimenting, reflecting, striving and becoming?”—Eduardo Briceño

Which brings me to life in the 21st century.

The proliferation of the internet’s blogging world occurred after I graduated from college, or to put it more eloquently, during the Great Recession. I stopped reading books. I began to read blogs—especially food blogs—and dabbled in blogging myself. In 2009, I got a Windows phone (remember those?) and although I didn’t have internet on that phone, I began taking more photos. It was great.

Fast forward to 2013, when my daughter was born. Several months before, I’d downloaded Instagram onto my *new* iPhone (I was a late adopter) and began to post images of my new baby. In short, I became addicted to Instagram.

Of course, I was also on Facebook posting photos and updates, like everyone else I knew.

Soon, I became a “person of the internet.” Constantly consuming, scrolling, updating, looking, wondering, feeling things. Never once did I stop to think deeply about how being online affected me mentally.

In 2016 (or maybe 2017?) I stopped using Facebook altogether. I was still using Instagram, and did not venture to Twitter until about 2020, when I realized that there was a real writing community there, and I was finding lots of writing opportunities on that platform.

Recently, I began to think about how being a person of the internet affected me.

This year, I made a conscious effort to check social media less. But I was still doomscrolling, as they say. I’d wake up and immediately look at my phone’s apps, checking the news in my email, signing up for a million newsletters, planning out when I’m going to blog, always searching for opportunities or at least interesting content that will make for good conversation.

What I couldn’t figure out was why I was going through these “slumps.” I’ve written about having seasonal affective disorder before, and I attributed it to changes in temperature and season. While that’s true, I also noticed a trend. My slump, unmotivated periods do occur at the tail end of one season or the transition into another, but it’s also predictable. I realized I was trying to do too much. In other words, I was performing and not learning.

I wanted to blog. I wanted to write for publications and make money from my words. I wanted to search for literary agents. I wanted to write a book, then edit a book. I wanted to learn sewing again. I wanted to try food photography. I wanted to bake. I wanted to write short stories. I wanted to look for a new job. I wanted to spend time with my kids and my husband. I wanted to read all of these newsletters, but also a million books on my TBR list. I wanted to plan vacations, take trips, organize my photos, take more photos, make photobooks. The list goes on.

On a recent episode of NPR’s Life Kit, they interviewed Sammy Nickalls, author of Log Off: Self-Help for the Extremely Online, where they included tips on how one can reclaim their life to being less online.

“Take stock of how you feel when you scroll,” they said. This is one of Nickalls’ tips in her workbook.

So I did just that. And I realized that perhaps my mental slump may have more to do with being online than being off. Whenever I stare at a screen for too long—as defined by an hour or more—my eyeballs go crazy. It starts to hurt. Not only was I performing and not learning, I was also unaware of how it affected my mental health. Whether it’s social media or reading stuff that others wrote or seeing photos, I suddenly felt overwhelmed.

I’m overwhelmed because I don’t have any good ideas. I’m overwhelmed because there’s too much good stuff! For example, there are so many good writers on Substack that I wonder how on earth they have the stamina to keep producing such a ridiculous amount of content as they do.

Perhaps it’s because of what food writer Alicia Kennedy said in her newsletter, which is: it’s not good enough to simply be a writer. You must also know how to be a podcaster, how to interview people, how to style your photos, how to generate ideas, how to research, how to fact check your work, and how to promote it on social media. We are everything and everywhere a all at once. “My presence is a commercial for my brain,” she says.

“My presence is a commercial for my brain.”—Alicia Kennedy

The idea of sharing a curated version of one’s life, separate from one’s real life has been reiterated in other places. “The labor of self-promotion and constantly sharing a curated version of myself online does not come naturally or easily for me despite loving/craving/needing connection with people (readers, other writers, fellow humans, etc.),” wrote Sara Petersen in her excellent newsletter, In Pursuit of Clean Countertops. “There’s the time/energy suck in creating a consistent, brand-able, online persona PLUS the time/energy suck in absorbing and making sense of everyone else’s online personas.”

Several years ago, I read a book called Us by David Nicholls

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. It’s a story about a couple in their mid-fifties who embarks on a multi-country trip around Europe with their son Albie, who’s about to head off to college. As you read through the book, there are scenes of Douglas (the main protagonist) and his wife Connie, who wants leave him, scenes replayed from their youth. Toward the end, Douglas has a realization, but by then it’s too late.

Part love story, part recollection of a marriage, it’s also a story about regret. It made me realize that the thing I would regret the most years from now is realizing that I spent too much time looking at other people’s lives rather than live my own.

On that NPR episode, Nickalls said something really great about boundaries. “I grew up not really understanding the concept of boundaries and I had to learn the very, very hard way what boundaries are, and why I need them and how to establish them, how to not feel guilty for establishing them because they’re really important,” she said. “It lets us live our lives in a free way…It really does free you to think about other things other than scrolling like crazy and I think digital minimalism is a step toward living a more intentional life.”

“I grew up not really understanding the concept of boundaries and I had to learn the very, very hard way what boundaries are, and why I need them and how to establish them, how to not feel guilty for establishing them because they’re really important.”—Sammy Nickalls

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I told you I would get to the point, so here it is.

I’m taking the next year off—yes, an entire year, starting tomorrow, the first day of fall, September 22nd—so that I can focus on other things. Here’s my list of things I will do and not do, a rough wish list.

• I will not read articles. Instead, I will read books. Books give me so much joy, especially fiction and essay collections. I get a bigger dopamine kick out of reading books—actual, physical ones—rather than reading articles.

• I will not blog. That means there will be no editions for this newsletter. I will only write if it fits one of two criteria: 1) journaling, or random thoughts that will never be published or read by anyone else, 2) commissioned articles for other publications.

• I will not check or post on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, with one exception—I will click on a link that leads to Twitter posts if it comes from a newsletter I subscribe to. Usually, it’s a writing opportunity.

• I will unsubscribe to (almost) everything. This is painful because there are so many good writers online. There is a small handful of writers whose blogs/newsletters I will keep but it is less than 10. You know who you are :)

• I will visit public libraries and bookstores more. You know, places that once gave me so much joy—and still do—and learn to be more present, maybe talk to the people who keep those places running.

• I will revise my novel and (try to) write a few short stories. I’ve neglected on this, so I need to get back on it. Maybe I’ll try to submit my stories to publications…who knows?

• I will learn to be a better baker. Instead of drooling at food photos, I plan on experimenting in the kitchen. I really want to be better at cakes, because I love cakes. Who doesn’t love cakes?

• I will do more jigsaw puzzles. Jigsaw puzzles challenges my brain and can take a while. But the good thing is that I can listen to a podcast or an audiobook while I’m doing it.

• I will learn to be thrifty, fix my own clothes like this cool lady. I don’t plan on monetizing any of this stuff. It’s simply for learning to be useful.

• I will try to learn a new language. Perhaps re-learn German, but I’ve always wanted to learn French too.

• MOST IMPORTANTLY, I will resist the urge to document my life online.

This sounds like a long list, I know. And it is. Will I be successful all year? I don’t know. If I’m successful at half of these items, then I’ll be satisfied. After all it’s not about doing everything—it’s about learning as you go along.

See you in a year!

-Hoang

In case you missed it…

• On traveling and perspective

• On some memorable meals of my youth

• On coastal trips and fish & chips

One more thing:

If you ever happen to visit Portland, I’d love to meet you in person. Feel free to email me at hoangsamuelson2@gmail.com. Assuming Google doesn’t flag your email as spam, then there’s a 90% chance that you’ll get a response from me. Otherwise, just send me a note!

1. It might just be the only one in the Pacific Northwest. Yippee.

2. I highly recommend this book.