I don’t have social media apps on my phone. This morning I needed some details for an event and I used the browser version of facebook. After taking what I needed I was directed to my home pages with feeds, notifications - and my immediate response was like a kid in a lolly shop - so much live intrigue! Of course, like a lolly, the excitement was instant and gone and if left to scroll, my life drained out of me and I became stale and elsewhere.

This is why I stay off news cycles and stories of everyone else’s lives - I can’t possibly complete with the sheer noise and drama of it - and I almost always am taken out of my life and into the milieu of everyone else’s - which by definition is trying to live in a world that’s not me and mine.

So I stop, decide to look around me, take a few deep breaks and make a decision to write instead of rush off into my day. This decision is a form of showing up to my life - a fidelity to my own path and a solace if I keep it up - building my own water table, deep and strong.

It’s a discipline, but a joyful one I never regret. Sort of like what a cold water dip does for my physical body, this practice tends my soul. And I’m glad today to be reminded that I have one - and that you too dear reader, have a soul that is crying out for rust a little bit of care and cultivation - things you do just for it’s growth, which again, by definition means not spending all your down time consuming the lives of other people.