More Memories of Other People’s Lives Than Our Own [Summer Read-Aloud]

  Sam Vander Wielen: Hey there and welcome back to On Your Terms®. So for the next couple of weeks, I’m gonna be doing something a little bit differently as part of a little summer series of sorts. For the next few weeks, I’ll be reading you a few of my essays that I’ve written on my Substack.

My Substack is just called Sam Vander Wielen because as you can probably tell by now, I’m really, really good with coming up with creative names for things. But I have a Substack called Sam Vander Wielen where I share personal essays and behind the scenes.

A lot about grief and loss coming back from that grief and loss and learning to, I don’t know, uncouple myself from overconsumption and overworking and really learning how to be more present in my life.

So all you have to do for the next couple of weeks until I come back with your full force regular episodes of On Your Terms® on September 14th is just kick back, put in your headphones, maybe even go for a walk and listen to my reading of this week’s essay from Substack.

If you’d like to subscribe to my Substack so that you can also read these on Substack or on the app, go ahead and just click the link down below. It’s completely free.

Nobody talks about what happens after you put down your phone. On building a life worth putting your phone down for. A lot of people talk about putting down your phone and deleting all your social media apps, but hardly anyone talks about what happens once you do. Getting off of social media isn’t just about unplugging from social only to plug into something else..

It’s not about switching from Instagram to YouTube or priding yourself on going from doom scrolling Instagram to doom scrolling Substack. Sure, Substack feels way better on the soul than Instagram does..

For me, it’s because of how slow it feels here versus quick, vapid Instagram reels or TikToks. But it’s still consuming so much of someone else’s life and their perspective without focusing on your own.

I’m really worried that we’re going to regret being zombies on our phones. I don’t want to creak my text neck up only to look around and realize I’m 84, hunched over, and I don’t know what just happened to my life. It’s been said that we will be the first generation to die with more memories of other people’s lives than our own. Let that sink in for a sec.

The amount of information I carry around about other people’s lives every day is insane. I know who’s on vacation where, who’s getting divorced and usually why, and even how many days straight a daughter of one of the creators I follow was constipated. I kid you not, she blasted the intimate details of her daughter’s lack of blasting all over the internet for days on end. That poor kid.

Yet I have unread texts I haven’t replied to sitting in my messages from actual people I know and love. I have piles of books I’ve purchased and couldn’t wait to read, yet haven’t cracked open.

I have lists of things I wanna try, places I wanna go, and classes I want to attend, but I can’t do any of those things if I’m too busy following along with everyone else’s life instead of living my own.

When both of my parents died within a year of each other, it flattened me. Everything I knew to be real and true in this world suddenly seemed to vanish overnight. I felt like a shell of myself. More than anything, I felt like I was starting over. Suddenly, I had this new opportunity to rebuild myself from scratch.

If I was going to rise as a phoenix out of the darkness, I was going to do it on my terms. I just watched the two people who brought me into this world take their last breaths. Once you see that, it puts a lot of shit in perspective, what matters, what doesn’t, how quickly time goes. You go from like, “Why hasn’t that person followed me back on Instagram yet?” To, “What does it all mean?” Really, really quickly.

Craving more time offline started off naturally. I couldn’t stand seeing everyone’s family barbecues plastered all over social media when I could still smell the grill smoke on my cream sweater from last summer’s barbecue at my mom’s beach house. It’s just that at my barbecue, half the attendees are now dead.

But over time, what started as avoidance slowly but surely turned into a, “Wait a minute, I kinda actually like this whole living my life offline thing.”

I felt more present in my conversations. I actually started replying to most people’s texts, and I even had a coffee at an aesthetically beautiful coffee shop and didn’t post about it. I know. I’ll hold for your applause. I started finding out what books I’d pick out if I didn’t know what everybody else was reading.

I stopped feeling bad for not liking romantasy and just started picking up the literary fiction I love, regardless of how trendy it was. I spent so much less money because, A, bye-bye spot on ads for things I don’t need, and B, I wasn’t buying a bunch of crap I didn’t need anymore because I thought it would change my life, my body, or my self-worth.

I also had so much new free time. I invested in things that filled me up instead of drained me, like my recent eight-week pottery class that was taught by my friend Jessamyn Go of Femmesole.

Slowly but surely, my brain disentangled itself. As great as it felt to start detaching myself from the algorithm, I still felt like something was missing from my online life.

I started setting better digital boundaries and practicing digital minimalism, but had I really built a life offline, or had I just built a somewhat better life that wasn’t online as much? It felt more like the latter. For me, that’s when things really started to click, like seatbelt click, not mouse click, ’cause remember, we’re going offline.

An offline life wasn’t going to build itself. I had to be proactive. I rooted into my community, both where I live and with entrepreneur friends I’d met online. I joined a small mastermind that focused on in-person meetups only. I signed up for any and every class that piqued my interest. I took a writing class at UCLA.

I started 100-day journal project, thanks to Suleika Jaouad. I even did a 100-day Peloton challenge to move my body every day. I didn’t just donate to my local chapter of the Audubon Society. I signed up for their emails and started attending nature walks and beach cleanups across Long Island, where I live.

But getting offline in an online world is really tough.

It feels like I’m swimming upstream past floating apps and so much noise, especially when it’s not like I’m trying to get offline completely. I run a really big business on it, and in many ways, I’m very much online. That’s probably why I’ve relapsed more times than I can count, but I’m getting really good at catching myself and coming back to center.

I’m finding my way more and more offline. Getting offline more has radically changed me and my life. I know from so many of you that you want to spend less time on your phone, social media, the apps, et cetera. And now it’s time we support each other in our quest to find what’s waiting for us on the other side, offline.

Which is why moving forward, alongside my personal essays on Substack, I’ll also be sharing offline diaries a little bit differently. Instead of a roundup of what I’m reading, listening to, et cetera, I’ll share more nitty-gritty details about how I’m actually building community in my own town, finding myself through hobbies, taking time off of my business to travel, favorite ways I’m being creative outside of my business, and how I’m giving my emotions motion, in other words, expression, and how it’s been the real healing power I didn’t know I needed.

More importantly, I’ll share what that’s all doing for me, both as a person and a business owner. Funny enough, the more I do offline, the better my online business does. Go figure. So I wanna hear from you as you’re listening to this. Are you excited to hear about hobbies, community, making friends, taking rests, et cetera?

P.S. If you want to build an online business that allows you to build a life you love offline, read my book, When I Start My Business, I’ll Be Happy.

Thanks so much for listening to today’s essay. I hope that you liked it. I would love to hear from you over on Substack, so make sure you come and subscribe to my Substack, Beyond Business, below, and go and comment on the essay that you just heard me read.

I’d love to see you there. With that, I’ll talk to you next week.

Thanks so much for listening to the On Your Terms® podcast. Make sure to follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. You can also check out all of our podcast episodes, show notes, links, and more at samvanderwielen.com/podcast. You can learn more about legally protecting your business and take my free legal workshop, Five Steps To Legally Protect and Grow Your Online Business at Samvanderwielen.com and to stay connected and follow along, follow me on Instagram at samvanderwielen and send me a DM to say hi.