Sorry I’m Late, I Was Busy Doomscrolling

And I Probably Didn’t Want To Come Even Though I Need Human Connection Now More Than Ever

I think I’ve started eight drafts over the last two weeks. I love writing, but I have just been consumed with thoughts, bombarded with information, opinions, lies, and also, thankfully, some pretty decent entertainment in between. I consume too much though, to the point where I just put my phone down and shake my head because WTAF is going on right now?? I continue editing, only for my mind to be drawn somewhere else to somewhere else to somewhere else.

How many eggs do we have left?/I need to drink more water/Did I confirm the time of that parent-teacher interview?/Hundreds of women raped and burned in Goma/What am I making for lunch tomorrow?/Disassociate/Wow, my ends are DRYYY, I need a haircut/Families return to Gaza after 15 months of war/ASMR with wooden balls/Hopecore/ Stay here for 1 minute so I can pay for my dad’s surgery//

Trump wants to buy Greenland and name it ‘Red, White & Blue Land’/Yeah/For real/ I gotta get some sleep tonight/My baby is in the NICU for a hole in her heart/Sob uncontrollably into sleeve/Funny elephant video/Is that jacket on sale yet?/Why have I never made my own green goddess dressing?/Oh! Must not forget to buy Valentine’s Day cards for Hudson’s class/ Get ready with me while I tell you about when I was assaulted/NEW PINK BLUSH!!/

I should probably get back to finishing that draft…

Each time I return to read what I left behind, it feels like a stranger wrote it. That person was in a different place and likely feeling a range of emotions brought on by whatever flurry of B.S. she had been consuming on whatever afternoon or late night after the kids went to bed.

“What is this shit?” - * starts NEW POST *

How am I to consume all of this and then expected to write well, or even sensibly? I mean, I suppose the only expectations on me are my own….and rightfully so! I just don’t know where to begin, let alone start or end. There is something to read and then something to watch and then something to question. Yes, I want to lean into the soft life but I also kinda want to go base jumping and get on a plane and fuck around in another country with my girlfriend in the UK, but I have no money. So I scroll and scroll. Should I throw my phone off the balcony and enjoy, maybe, 48 hours of being completely disconnected before experiencing extreme anxiety and combined FOMO? What am I scared of missing out on exactly?

I have changed the way I move and feel about posting on social media though. It’s been a learning curve in itself, but for the most part, feels really good as I’ve taken the pressure off of me. I completely archived all of my Instagram posts a few months ago which wasn’t an easy decision. As I hovered over the buttons, I realized what an emotional tie I had to all of these little squares. I had put so much thought into writing the captions for many of them that it felt wrong to give them up, even though I could reinstate them with one click.

I shared so much of me over the last 10 years via that little app. My relationships with friends, my experiences during my pregnancies, my first year of motherhood, the pandemic, small joys, losses, things I found interesting or funny. I wasn’t growing though, despite following all the ‘rules’, commenting, interacting, liking, blah blah blah. It felt thankless and I began to get annoyed. First, for not growing, secondly, for caring about not growing, like WGAF? If one of my captions helped at least one person, I was happy but eventually it just felt like posting every day with something I deemed meaningful or good enough was a chore and that’s not why I write. So. I took a big breath, archived it all and started spending more time on Substack.

I’m convinced that I would likely spiral down rabbit hole after rabbit hole if it wasn’t for my mommy duties. I love my little family so so much, and as matcha crunchy granola as this sounds, my kids ground me. They keep me where my feet are and calm me down. They remind me to pay attention to what matters. We’re all we’ve got and I’ve been leaning into that. We laugh together every day in the car and they both say the most hilarious things.

My daughter loves to show me how she puts her boots on all by herself. She twirls around in a circle in her dress and says “I’m so beautiful Mommy!!”. My son has a loose tooth that will come out any day now, and when he sees a bird poop on a car, he says “That’s DIS-GUS-TING!”, and I remind him that it’s good luck and he looks at me with his brows furrowed, like, WHATCHUMEANBYDAT?

My two little bubbas, one of which insisted on being the Pilot but didn’t even end up staying on the ride LOL

Bernie Sanders, my Shayla, is uploading on TikTok. Most news outlets can’t be trusted and more and more people are showing their ass. How can you not pay attention when a president says he wants to level Gaza, put out 1.8 million people and make a resort out of it? HUH?? Like, let’s be SO FFR.

Sometimes, I remember that there’s someone out there studying fossils and rare flowers, making special notes in their special notebook by a babbling brook with a cup of tea growing cold. A ballet dancer is breaking in her pointe shoes and rehearsing steps in her head while humming. A teacher is grading reports in her car, a woman cries at the bedside of a family member as she’s informed that it won’t be much longer.

How lovely it is to disconnect from it all. To not be concerned to the point of burnout, overwhelm and I dunno, higher cortisol levels, probably. All this to say that I hope you can dedicate some time to thinking about something else, something that makes you smile on the inside. Perhaps you can recall a dream you had, or notice a tree branch dancing in the breeze on your ride home. Look at the moon!, send your friend a voice note to let them know you were thinking of them, smoke a blunt!, learn the lyrics to that song you love singing but always end up mumbling the second verse. Oh and also, just dance baby!, dance!

Don’t worry. The world will still be on fire when you get back LOL, so take a while.

I can’t be alone, so please share what algorithm you’ve been stuck scrolling through. I need some suggestions to lighten mine up.

Thanks for coming by, I’d love a tap on that heart below and every time I get a new subscriber, I literally bust down Tatiana.

Catch you on the next one.

kisses.