LETTER #4 - From The Digital Convent ❤️
How is it, inside of The Convent?
So far, in my previous letters, I’ve told you about the realizations, frustrations, rejections and adventures that propelled me to create a convent for myself.
I would also like to tell you a little bit of how life is over here!
And, well, to be honest, the convent looks different from day to day:
I can be in the convent while in the library.
While in my studio.
While in my bedroom.
While walking around the city or the forest.
But the #1 most important thing is that,
when I’m in the convent,
I am
BY
MYSELF ❤️❤️❤️
With no-one to interrupt my train of thinking, and my listening to The Universe.
Being in The Convent, means, pretty much, being in a space where I can listen to my imagination without interruptions.
That’s the most important thing!
✨✨✨ Listening to my inner voice ✨✨✨
That’s what matters greatly, when I’m here.
It’s funny, because, when you think about being by ourselves,
it seems like we’re alone plenty of time!
Aren’t we?? Maybe even too much!
In fact, there something brewing in society called “The Loneliness Epidemic”!
According to this, us, humans, are the loneliest we’ve ever been throughout history!!
BUT!!!!!!
When we’re by ourselves, are we alone, really?
If we pay close attention, the times when us, contemporary humans are listening to ourselves is extremely rare.
When we’re “by ourselves”, we’re often hanging out with screens!
We’re either:
Watching TV shows.
Scrolling through social media.
Reading the news.
Listening to podcasts.
Consuming all kinds of information, at an incredibly rapid speed, in one way or another.
All of these options are not bad, really.
It’s actually pretty wonderful that we have access to so much! There’s abundance of worlds, of voices, of possibilities, of realities!
I consider the internet a humongous gift and a tool we could use to humanity’s development and advantage.
But, for me, my dysfunctional use of the internet got to the point where I had completely lost control over it.
I watched too many videos, I scrolled too much on social media, I read too many news.
One link would take me to another, and another and another.
Scrolling became as natural as breathing, at some point. I stopped noticing when I was doing it!
I avoided silence at all costs.
I avoided boredom.
I avoided being with myself.
I wasted many many many hours.
Countless hours.
Thousands of them.
Slowly I became aware of one thing:
This over-consumption was taking me further and further away from myself!
My mind was constantly, incessantly, RELENTLESSLY filled to the brim with information!
By a bunch of information that the algorithms had chosen to put in there!
Isn’t it weird, when you think about it??
That we end up THINKING, imagining, remembering, dreaming things that someone else placed inside of our heads?
That we fall asleep remembering memes, news, jokes, videos, images, faces, sounds, words, that come out from other people or computers?
I guess it would be one thing if we got to carefully curate every bit of information that entered our brain.
But, a lot of the time, the specific pieces of information that end up shaping our consciousness, are pieces that the algorithms chose for us!
A lot of the time, the algorithms got to choose what we think about when we’re falling asleep, at night!
When I realized this,
is when I decided to take a year off from my mindless consumption of the internet.
I know a year might sound a bit extreme.
But I knew my situation was extreme!
I think this is the case for a lot of us.
So I wanted to fight for my freedom as hard as I could.
And I decided to turn this into an experiment.
Especially,
Because the odds are as high as my very own connection to myself!
My attention!
My hours!
My days!
My mind!
My mood!
MY LIFE!!!!!!!!!
That’s why I’m doing this Convent.
AND, with the time I save from mindless consumption, I’m creating Art!
Creating something every day is one of rules of my Convent.
You see,
I feel like a lot of us numb ourselves through all kinds of mindless consumption.
We numb anxiety. Uncertainty. Loneliness. Fear. Trauma.
It is really not our fault that painful things happened to us.
That scary things are happening right now.
That we feel lonely or anxious or sad.
That we feel the need to soothe ourselves.
It’s not our fault that technology got created. That they made it AS EXTREMELY ADDICTIVE AS POSSIBLE and that it was thrown into our hands without any instruction or care about our wellbeing!!
Because of this.
My Convent is an act of resistance.
But it’s also an act of healing.
Because Art has always been my way of coping and overcoming anxiety. Uncertainty. Loneliness. Fear. Sadness. Trauma.
Ever since I was a child!
And it has always brought me enormous amount of joy!
A way to connect with the universe, with myself and with the world ✨✨✨
But for years and years, I feel like overconsumption of the internet has slowly taken more of my time. It has quieted the volume of my inner voice.
But, through this year of disconnection, I want to give it the space it needs, in order to come back to me ❤️❤️❤️
I’m sharing with you, because, who knows?
Maybe you’re feeling the way I’ve been feeling too?
Big hugs, my friend!
All the way from The Digital Convent.
With lots of love,
-Ani ❤️