Spending a weekend offline in a yurt helped soothe my tiny little brain

After weeks of enduring dark news stories and feeling lost in a cycle that won't let up, stepping onto the snow of rural Vermont for a weekend gave me an instant feeling of relief.

It is not that I love the cold, or that I am in a state that is very far north. I have watched enough horror movies to be wary of any secluded, wooded experience that involves my partner and me getting there via a small car with no 4-wheel drive.

I don't think critically about any adventure in front of me, something I consider both a flaw and a strength, so I didn't know we were signing up for a weekend without service. After returning, I found myself in a state of joy because of the inability to contact anyone outside of the AirBnb yurt, as well as the inability to receive any emails or notifications.

I am not the first person to feel the need for a digital cleanse. According to a report by the Pew Research Center, the majority of American adults have their phones on them all day long, disrupting their lives with an unprecedented presence of incoming notifications. The storm that swept over our yurt the first night was as shocking as having that connectedness completely revoked. Despite returning to my phone multiple times throughout the day, I was met with silence and a dark screen over the weekend. This was weird at first. It started to be nice.

Then there is the sleep. I am afraid of most things. With wind whipping around our yurt, a fire blazing in our wood stove, and leaves crunching and snow around us, I assumed sleep would be out of the question. The roof of our building became bloated and heavy as the snow became so heavy that it caused ice to accumulate on the sides of the building. I thought that the unfamiliar sounds couldn&t possibly result in a sleep. I was wrong. I didn't consider what it would mean not to have the blue light of my screen glowing at me at all times, and the truth was that I was afraid that we could be featured as the main characters of a bad true crime show.

When I returned to the city, where my sleep was not as good, I found a study about how people who read a print book instead of an e-reader at night experienced better melatonin release, fell asleep faster, and felt more rested the following day. That was part of it. I realized that the technology break allowed me to deepen my relationship with my partner and myself.

According to multiple studies, people feel more connected to others when cell phones are out. I paid attention to how the garlic on the stove made the beans taste different. I felt the fire in the wood stove heat up the room, listened to my partner recount the intimate details of cutting firewood for the wood stove in the snow, and felt the sting of the cold wooden floor under my feet. I am pretty sure I would not be present if I was waiting on a call, texting or streaming Love Is Blind at the same time.

This was a brief break from the world of constant connection. I spent hours on TikTok after we hit the road and got better service. During the time away, I was able to check in with my connection to technology and how it affects my relationships and experiences in the real world. I decided to take some of the screen-free weekend into my life in Brooklyn because it was out of my control. I will be turning my phone off for larger chunks of my day as a way to get more done.