Put Down the Phone: Why Being Present Matters More Than Recording
Why do we film life instead of living it? A New Year’s reflection on presence, phones, and letting moments be enough.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Then and Now (A Time Machine)
I began journaling as a way to build a time machine.
Not a metaphorical one. A real one.
I wanted a way to return to the exact thoughts of a previous version of myself—not the softened memory of them, not the story I’d tell later, but the words as they were written in the moment.
Seven years ago, I was 41.
It was pre-Covid. I was deeply focused on growing my business. Momentum mattered. Attention felt scarce. Anything that didn’t move the needle felt like friction.
Recently, I came across this entry from that time:
When something is new or more emotional, the amygdala seems to kick into overdrive, recording every last detail of the experience. The more detailed the memory, the longer the moment seems to last… The more familiar the world becomes, the less information your brain writes down, and the more quickly time seems to pass.
I went on to outline ways to “break routines”:
remove TV, news, and social media.
interrupt the morning autopilot.
meet new people regularly.
Reading it now, I don’t cringe. I recognize it.
I was trying to outsmart time. I was trying to keep life from slipping past me while I was busy building something that mattered to me and my family. That instinct wasn’t wrong. It belonged to the season I was in.
What’s changed isn’t the desire to live intentionally.
It’s what I think intention actually looks like.
Back then, intention meant elimination.
Remove distractions. Reduce waste. Optimize inputs.
Now, intention feels more like discernment.
It’s okay to watch a movie if you’re actually enjoying it.
It’s okay to sit still.
It’s okay to cook slowly, walk without a goal, let a good song finish.
Life isn’t a never-ending Type A to-do list.
That was never the point.
I used to think the goal was to eliminate anything that didn’t move the needle.
Now I realize the goal is to notice when the needle doesn’t matter.
A good meal.
A shared laugh.
A quiet evening.
A story that lands.
All of it advances a life.
“Know what’s enough. Build what matters.”
PS. If you’d like to read more about my whys of journaling, I wrote about it here
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