I am acclimated, well, raised by internet noise.

The constant hum is the constant barrage of news, the scrolling of social media, the video playing in the background, the podcast side-loaded ready to go, the switch from laptop to phone to tablet depending on where I’m currently sitting.
This is my home and has been for the better part of the last 20 years. I don’t see how to get out of that space.

Now, let’s start with what it means to say that I am raised to this internet noise. I was a geeky kid. My main milestones of development were to get a computer that I could own end-to-end. Before that, I would resort to using the family computer.

Ah, remember those times ? When we were sharing a computer with multiple people? This feels so dated and odd today to share your keyboard with someone else, ew. Sharing the family computer must have been hard for my family because I was hacking (hear-destroying) the shit out of it. Customisation was king at the time, and I loved changing everything I could about this silly little Windows XP. Themes, animated backgrounds, startup optimisations, a bunch of software to make “RAM run better” (wtf), and all that to clog this little machine that was used by everyone to check their emails. Sure, defrag that machine every other day to keep it running smoothly, you weirdo.

I’ve built my life on this. It was only the right choice (maybe??) for my family to accept that I would own a computer one day and have one in my room. This computer raised me.

Through this process (which is not the point of this reflection, but I can see how that can be a topic I should fall into someday), I became acclimated to internet noise, finding information anywhere, building routines around the internet, and connecting in any way possible. This is where my excitement was at the time, and I was built around it, like many I’m sure.

Fast forward to now. I am following the same patterns I built during this time as a teenager. It makes sense. Those formative years built me.

I still now, twenty years later, have the same routines of checking the various spaces on the internet I like to look at and connect with the noise. Maybe I am a very different actor in that space than I was at that time, but I am behaving the same way. I subconsciously want to feel that noise and be surrounded by it. Do I derive a sense of peace from being here? The answer is not so simple. Subconsciously, this is my comfort. This is where I feel peace because this is where I’ve always been. Consciously, I know there is no peace to be found here, but this is the most grounded addiction I have to fight.

It is so funny. In my most recent adult life, I have realised that I don’t thrive in busy cities and noisy environments. Peace is in solitude, in calm, space, and stillness. In the physical world, this is where I know my comfort is. This is not something I have learned for the non-physical world.

So far, I have made the attribution that a silent digital world was a non-existent digital world. This is what most of the self-help gurus will tell you: leave your phone away, don’t use the internet, opening a browser is the devil, etc…

For someone raised with an addiction so ingrained, I need to find a middle ground, at least to start my disconnection. Somewhere that feels like the calm I like to feel outside, but while I’m on the computer.

Does silence even exist here ?

Today, the only place where I feel silent is the place I speak the most in. Right here.

This site is slowly becoming like that garden I want to hang out in. It’s still not where I want it to be, but I have put in effort into what it is so far.

This feels like a private garden, but people can walk in. In fact, there might be people hanging out here now, and I wouldn’t know about it.

I remember setting this goal for this year to build this place, this little world where I could slowly expand my wings and feel at home. Right now is the first time it truly does.

Like an apartment you’ve been in for a few months, it truly starts to feel like home once you’ve made it the way you like, and it requires constant effort.

The bare walls will get covered with the right colors and paintings, slowly but surely.