Taking an Annual
Screen Sabbath
Mrs. Tsh Oxenreider
My third child was born in mid-June 2010. My older two children were ages five and two, and we had just moved (quite unexpectedly) six thousand miles from our apartment in Turkey back to my home state of Texas. Our original plan was to briefly visit the States for my son’s birth and my postpartum care, but life had other ideas and we found ourselves, rather suddenly, selling the possessions that we had left in our Turkish apartment and settling in to the reality of a new long-term modus operandi, now in our home culture.
On top of this, I had accidentally created a career for myself as a writer. In 2007 I started a blog purely as a creative outlet, a hobby meant to assuage the daily grind of running a household of young children in a culture vastly different than mine, which on most days made me feel like an ignorant toddler myself. My therapist had advised me to take on an easily-accessible activity that made me feel more competent at life, and my husband had suggested a blog, since he knew I liked to write. Starting a blog in this era was digital serendipity, a right-time, right-place situation, and this website rather quickly found an audience, inevitably resulting in some of the effects that came with a popular blog in the late aughts: advertisers, sponsors, and book deals. Soon after, I also added a monetized podcast, which in those days was produced via technological smoke signals and carrier pigeons, which meant having very few digital tools to help me. I had a very full plate.
I had created for myself a job that could be done from anywhere in the height of an era in which the novelty of this idea was fueled with pure, naïve energy. My husband and I eagerly climbed aboard the train, thinking: “If we can create a digital cottage industry that allows us to work together from anywhere, we should — let’s go all in.”
While in Turkey, I had planned to homeschool my eldest for her kindergarten year, but now that we were stateside, we had many more options. We put her in a good private school; my husband and I tag-teamed watching our toddler and newborn, one of us caring for the kids while the other one of us worked; and we embraced the late night, odd hours rhythm of digital employment. I rolled up my sleeves, shoved deep down my desire to homeschool my child, and went to work.
This was also the era of embracing that new tool called social media. All the Thought Leaders recommended being online everywhere at all times — or at least giving the appearance of doing so. I shrugged my shoulders at the dystopian sound of this and took on the work of hyperconnectivity. After all, it was part of the gig. My brain was fueled nearly round-the-clock by strategies for online growth.
All the Thought Leaders recommended being online everywhere at all times — or at least giving the appearance of doing so. I shrugged my shoulders at the dystopian sound of this and took on the work of hyperconnectivity.
All the while, I really did still prioritize being a good wife and mom. I did it all: wrote my first book (and then secured more book deals); deciphered the ever-changing algorithms of this newfangled social media; and cracked the code on how to keep up with my wifely and maternal duties while still writing prolifically. I coated all this with an outer shell, smiling through my reverse culture shock, which had given me whiplash from a plan that shifted us from a presumed cross-cultural, overseas life to one back in our home culture. I was not doing well.
One year later, my thirdborn turned one. We were once again moving, this time from Texas to Oregon, which would add a new layer of culture shock. The disconnectedness during a long drive through the western expanse of the U.S., plus the inevitable delay in setting up internet service after eventually finding a rental home in our new city, threatened to force a digital break on us. I was nervous. True, the year before, when my son was born, I had a little time off from posting on my blog and called it “maternity leave.” And afterward, I was pleasantly surprised to find that none of my readers seemed to mind my brief silence. Yet I had still felt the need to return to the grind as soon as I could. I had worked harder than ever that next year.
Now, faced with another possible break, I wondered whether I could really do it again. Dare it be true that if I again took a few weeks off from posting, no one would mind? Could I possibly even be bold enough to take an entire month off? Would it work, or would it sink me? This idea went against all the algorithmic rules, which clearly say that if you stop posting consistently, you’ll lose your audience. Taking a whole month off would be risky.
It sounds silly, but the blog and podcast were now my family’s full-time source of income, our bread and butter. There really was a risk that taking a month off of posting new content meant taking away a month’s salary, or worse. And if I’m honest, it also meant taking away a sense of purpose and meaning from my otherwise ordinary life as a mom at home with young children. The internet’s economy was (and still is) attention, and in an ever-competitive field where more and more blogs and podcasts popped up daily like weeds, a month of not publishing meant a month of less attention. Which meant less relevance. Fewer eyeballs on my digital offerings. More obscurity. Perhaps even an irreversible, long-term decline!
But the same shoved-down part of me that still wanted to homeschool my kids also nagged at my conscience about my attachment to break-free online posting. Something about all this wasn’t quite right. Ironically, my blog and podcast were about simple living, and while I intellectually embraced the ethos and tenets of simplicity, I had to admit that I wasn’t fully living up to my convictions. 
I craved authenticity. Before it was even a catch phrase for getting offline, I longed to touch grass, and to do so regularly. I knew I needed to live out the realities of what I wrote, or soon I might not have any experiences left worth writing about. I was gut-punched at the thought of my young children one day remembering their mom mostly behind a screen, snapping at them to give her a moment’s peace so she could finish a sentence about why families should embrace a simpler
way of life.
So just before we left Oregon, I hung up a figurative “gone fishin'” sign on my blog and podcast, loaded the boxes into a moving trailer behind the minivan, and went radio silent for a full month as we trekked two thousand miles northwest and settled into our new home.
And . . . everything was fine. When I came back, my readers and listeners were still magically there. They didn’t revolt. Our income didn’t suffer. My book deals were still active. As it turned out, people didn’t “need” me to be constantly online at all.
Even better, a month away from the internet was just the vitamin I needed to revitalize my mental health, physical stamina, and overall perspective on the whole enterprise of online work. Reinvigorated, I found the clarity to decide to homeschool our eldest in the coming year, and we figured out ways to make this work with our lifestyle. Homeschooling proved to be good for our family in many ways over the coming years, and it is a step we might never have taken without that month away to recalibrate my perspective and remind myself of what I really wanted.
From then on, my work as a writer depended on a month offline every single summer. I eventually added ignoring social media to the mix as well, and then phone use in general. At first I tried to schedule guest writers and pre-planned social media posts during my absence, but I eventually ditched that, too — readers were perfectly fine with not hearing from me for four weeks.
Some fourteen years after my first maternity blog leave, spending July offline has become my standard practice. I also now typically add two weeks off during the Christmas season, thus “squeezing” my work as a full-time writer into ten-and-a-half months. And it works beautifully.
Over time, I have learned many things from this practice, but the most unexpected lesson, the one that should matter most in this to us all, is that long screen sabbaths deliver benefits far beyond a better work-life balance. To begin with, leaving screens for a month gives the gift of humility by reminding us, in a good way, that none of us are that particularly special. Even though the occasional popular social media post might give us a boost of presumed significance, the world will keep turning even if we go without that boost. Likewise, missing that one popular post from someone else, the one everyone we know is talking about, reminds us that none of us truly needs to keep up with the digital zeitgeist.
Over time, I have learned many things from this practice, but the most unexpected lesson, the one that should matter most in this to us all, is that long screen sabbaths deliver benefits far beyond a better work-life balance.
Extended digital breaks also provide a regular reminder that screens aren’t in charge of us. In The Common Rule, Justin Whitmel Early recommends turning off phones for one hour a day — not just silencing them or tossing them in a drawer, but actually powering them completely off. Why? To tangibly remind ourselves that we are in charge of our phones, they are not in charge of us. They are not taskmasters, dictating and commanding our hourly attention. So, too, with a long screen sabbath: powering down our screens tells both us and them that we — the human beings — are in charge of our attention. We control the screens, not the other way around.
A month-long screen sabbath helps put screens in their rightful place in our lives: as controllable tools rather than machine impersonations that threaten to replace us. Screens should help us do the work of living life better, not do the work of living life for us. Machines cannot engage in fully human activities; that is a privilege afforded only to us divinely-made mortals.
So we must fight to prevent screens from robbing us of the dignity of work, of community, and of spiritual meaning. Screen sabbaths are important because they remind us that we humans actually live in small, three-dimensional analog communities, not in the behemoth digital world that’s a hair’s breadth away from becoming an all-encompassing metaverse, an alternate reality created by billionaires where we will willingly do all our living. Regular, extended screen breaks recenter our focus on the real, several-mile radius immediately around our homes and communities, the physical and social setting of our real lives.
Finally, we need regular screen sabbaths because they have the power to help us remember that we have the strength to do hard things. Screen sabbaths are not easy, and the longer I’ve done them, the harder they have become. Not on my end; I can now get around just fine without social media or email in my pocket. In fact, more and more often I leave my phone at home when I don’t need it, even when I’m not on a sabbath. But the world around me wants me to depend on my screen at all hours of the day, with restaurants placing QR codes on their tables instead of paper menus, and schools requiring you to communicate with them via a special app just to know what’s going on in your child’s classes. Living for a month without a screen is not easy in such a digitally-saturated world, but that’s part of the point. We do well with regular reminders that we can do hard things and that a life of ease isn’t our goal. What conveniences are we willing to trade for a more real, connected, and human-oriented life? If you’re nodding along in agreement yet aren’t sure where to begin, let me offer a few practical tips to help you start off on your own screen sabbath.
First, you need real evidence that you can do this, so start small by powering off your phone or computer for just one hour a day. Try to extend this hour into two, and then three, and so on, eventually building up to one full day per week.
Next, schedule in a small daily sabbath, one that won’t upset your boss or otherwise make important tasks impossible. Perhaps let your supervisor know that you’d like to leave your computer at your work desk and to turn off your phone at 5:00 each workday. Something is better than nothing.
Then, try completely leaving your phone at home for a few hours when you won’t need it — treat yourself to the discovery that you don’t need it nearly as much as you think you do. Then, leave it at home more and more often. Build up the confidence that you can navigate your surroundings without GPS at your fingertips and music in your earbuds.
Next, consider dumbing down your phone entirely. Remove all unnecessary apps so that it becomes a boring rectangle, a basic tool instead of a dangerous machine. Better yet, replace your smartphone entirely: there are ample intentionally “dumb” phones available — you may find they make your life much smarter.
Finally, see if you can find a way to jump into a multi-week screen sabbath, or something as close to it as you can get. And when you do, expect to get the jitters. Withdrawal is real, and it’s to be expected. But you will survive it, and before too long into your break, you’ll wake up one day and find yourself not instinctively reaching for your phone first thing in the morning.
You’ll be okay with not listening to a podcast while you make dinner. You’ll be able to read (ink on paper!) for longer and longer bouts of time. And you’ll sit across the table from a friend at a coffee shop for a full two hours and not once wonder what’s going on in the digital world.
Remember, you’re the boss of your screens — they’re not the boss of you. Reclaim your right as a human to work, think, and play with dignity. Embrace the beautiful analog world in which you live, and you just may eventually find yourself stopping to smell roses that you never knew were there. How much more today, as opposed to when I took my first month-long sabbath in 2010, do we need regular breaks from our screens, these digital miracles that lie to us so effectively as they tell us that they, not we, will determine our quality of life? Screen breaks do more than merely reduce screens’ influence over us — they are a powerful way to rebel against our digital culture’s lies.
As for me, I’ve decided this year to take my screen sabbath a step further: I’m taking an entire summer off the internet. This is partly so I can focus on finishing my next book manuscript, but it’s also because I know, deep in my bones, that I need an even longer break this year. The internet has been loud lately, and I’m craving quiet. My mind, body, and soul require it. And until then, knowing that I have a plan in place, I can be satisfied with juggling my work during the weekdays as an online writer and a homeschooling parent, with digging in the garden after school and on the weekends, and with looking forward, even more than usual, to the coming of summer.
