I Refuse to be a Slave to My Phone

How to Ignore the Outside Noise (Both Work & Personal)

Headline intellectual credit to

Mami Onami

This is another unedited post. Enjoy the raw, unfiltered Gab.

Phone Work

There is the constant communication and messages of work. Mine is mostly on my phone….but, occasionally, I still do dabble in the corporate america realm of laptop farms.

In my work realm, there’s like 3 people that get up-most priority: My literary agent, my manager, and my executive assistant.

Then there’s the next level of people: independent contractors that are working on a project basis with me. They get a response by EOD.

Then there’s the tertiary: random people selling me stuff, my comment sections, articles written and content made about me (I rarely read them) any app notifications, and other random influencer things that hard to describe. I usually just describe this all as “outside noise”

And that’s my personal boundaries with work .

I am not saving lives here. I just serve the masses on our relationship of work. Yes, I think that’s pretty impactful and I know it’s my calling to life or as others would refer to a dharma.

But in doing this mission, I don’t need to destroy my nervous system and interrupt the natural flow my intuition already has built in within me. Other people’s urgencies are usually not my own and vice versa.

And to people who expect immediate responses 24/7, I think that’s more a personality/ego issue than an appropriate professional.

And this dharma I have it’s my entire personality. Could you imagine if I thumped this “you are not your job” vibe to you all and then, behind the scenes, I am continuously crashing out and losing my life over every message sent to me regarding my work….? That would absolutely be grounds for cancellation. You have my permission to cancel me as a fraud if I am over here making my job my whole personality while creating a whole brand on how to not do that.

This all goes back to my one thing. My one thing is being paid for the quality of thoughts I have.

Does reactively responding to everything that comes my way on my phone produce high quality thoughts and creativity I yearn to serve the masses and expect to be compensated back for? No. Okay perfect, case closed.

Then There’s Personal Phone Stuff

There’s also the personal phone noise. The entertainment complex we are expected to care about.

I really don’t care about what hot take I am supposed to consume myself with on TikTok or the podcast realm. I could not care about debating drake vs kendrick. I like them for seperate reasons. If Drake is a pedo, we gotta come with receipts meaning evidence and a due process. I really don’t care for following groupthink on which a list celebrity i know nothing about except thier brand I am supposed to hate today. I don’t have the energy.

I really don’t care about justin baldoni. I still don’t really know who he is. I don’t care about the girl that’s starting beef about him. And I’ve never cared about Ryan Reynolds. I don’t watch movies and I’m not Deadpool’s target demo.

You know what hot takes in my life I am expect myself to pick a side on everyday? Here’s a few:

• Figuring out what kind of relationship I want with my father, aka my abuser, who’s currently in prison while him and I are now both sober and adults.

• Becoming the loving parent for myself, so I don’t repeat my parents bullshit.

• How to choose love everyday in my relationship with Matthew.

• Navigating if I am attracting the right friends or not.

• Figuring out how to have a relationship as an adult with all my extended family whomst, as a kid, I was not encouraged to have a relationship with.

• Managing my recovery.

• If I ate 3 meals or not.

• Trying to figure out how to remove weeds from yard in a non toxic way.

• Figuring out if I am currently enabling someone in my life right now or not.

• Constantly assessing if my actions today feeding the life I want. And what life do I want? And by when?

• Should I go paddle boarding or go to yoga instead?

• Should I buy a rental property or more stocks?

• Should I save for taxes or loan it to myself for another project to launch? Have I paid my attorney? Has everyone paid me? Etc….

And these are just some brief bullet points of what I am figuring out every day. I could list more if you gave me time.

So no….I could ’t care less about the Met Gala. Truly.

And I’ve been like this since I was a little kid. During my formative years, my mom chose good groceries over cable and wifi. If I wanted to watch something, I would go to the library and rent one of the seasons of The Office for the 20th time. So, I was never raised with this entertainment buzz.

I don’t see it as real culture. Actually, right now as we speak, I am reading an entire book on the CIA and different mob’s involvement in the entertainment industry over time. It’s very interesting! And so no I do not care about the Colosseum show of the day. The book is called Hollywood Babylon by Kenneth Anger, if you’re interested in book clubbing with me!

Of course, from time to time, I am talking in the group chats about something silly I am seeing on TikTok. I am not an alien. But these silly hot takes we’re expected to be consumed by everything, about people I’ve never personally met, are not my virtues I am seeking to express to others everyday.

How I do this

I tell myself that I trust the information will find me at the right time.

That’s the only thing I can do. Any other expectation is seeking perfection which is not possible. Perfection is a human condition. I cannot perfectly be present for every perfect piece of info in my life, at all times. And that’s just reality. I can either be in reality and learn how to manage that. Or, strive for this illusion of perfection and never be happy because I am too busy trying to make every person that messages me happy.

I chose to be in reality.

It comes with the willingness to be misunderstood.

Some people may be annoyed by my lack of urgency in responding. That’s not my problem. The only time it’s my problem is if the person has originally indicated it is high priority and I agree and I still don’t match it with urgency. Then ya I am slowing a process down and being a diva. And even then, I think we should all operate with a level of compassion for one another that things get busy.

Judgement from people happen all the time. Whether were afraid of judgement of others but no one is actually judging us and were just making up the judgement in our head. Or people are actually judging us. The difference doesn’t actually matter.

It takes real boundaries to manifest are dreams. If someone has a side comment about my life, cry me a river. Also I get paid by the amount of attention I create, negative or positive, so the judgement doesn’t hurt me at all (unless I chose it to hurt me).

It comes with the willingness to be patient of others

If I am vibing around in my own creative flow all day and I respond whenever I want, then, yes, it may take the next business day to get a response from the other person. That’s fair to assume. I can’t just frolic around and only respond when I want to but then expect everyone else to respond immediately.

That’s just part of the opportunity cost of prioritizing my happiness over being always available. I made my bed with that a long time ago.

I know that it is my job to be accountable and take responsibility for communication in my buisiness.

I fucking hate emails. That’s just something about me. I would rather be in a group chat than an email thread. I do not like the UI of email apps. Email threads load in weird ways on both computers and phones. Just give me a little blurb of text I can hold down and respond to or send a voice memo about.

But, alas we work in the email factory of today’s America. So I cannot be a narcissistic asshole and expect everyone to want to text me and cater to just me. And I also can’t just say “I hate emails” and then never respond to email and not come with a solution for the necessary emails required to complete my mission here.

So I stepped up to a new level of business ownership last year and learned how to hire, manage, and afford an executive assistant. But then something else was happening…

By October of last year, I was finally doing this successfully. I had the people in my teams doing the stuff I hired them to do. But behind the scenes, I was being a little baby about the responsibility of it. In reality I didn’t realize that my assistant wasn’t going to be a mind reader. I still need to communicate and manage the assistant and I guess I didn’t quite understand the responsibility that was going to take from me.

So part of my new year’s resolutions this year is being more accountable about managing people. I can manage people and not cry about it and whine and act like a baby because no one knows what I am thinking at every moment. Or I can rise to the occasion and thank the people around me for being so willing and eager to help me and chose to see it as a gift. I can now say, 4 months into this resolution/goal I have been working towards: I am gifted with the opportunity to have an executive assistant. The responsibility of it comes easy to me. And while yes, like most things, it is not easy 24/7 100% of the time, it doesn’t have to be hard.

Our minds are powerful things. It’s all about what parts we chose to focus on.

I am a Do Not Disturb girlie.

I love the iOS feature where there’s now different modes of DND. I toggle between different ones all the time. Even on the weekends, I sometimes I my DND on. I do not need to see all the app’s promotional messages about something that benefits them more than me just because they sent it to me right now. byeeee get out of my face.

I used to have my DND on when I worked in corporate. I never got in trouble for it. I truly would rather the silence of my own thoughts over the constant chimes of Outlook and Slack.

If you feel a little nervous about this at your job, I have a pep talk for you:

Girl put your DND on work. I promise you know one will notice. At my first job, I was in such a high touch role with large clients at my job and still no one cared. If I responded to a Slack message in 1 min versus 45 mins no one cared. No one cares. They think everything is urgent. And by the time you respond back to their “urgent message" they already sent out 3 other urgent things. They moved on. Nothing we do in corporate America is that important.

My second and last job I ever had was my lazy girl job. It was not as high touch. But at the end of my time there, they added a mandaty Slack response time minimum. If I can remember the policy to my best knowledge, it was any message sent by our boss either directly to us or in our team channel, had to be responded by 1 hour. And reacting via emojis could suffice as a response.

I couldn’t have handed in my resignation quicker. Color me a bad employee, but, as an employer now, I could neverrrr imagine creating a working environment where a 1 hour response time for EVERY MESSAGE was a disciplinary offense. That's insaneeeeee. I get there are urgent messages from time to time. But, unless we are working in a hospital, not every message.

To me, this comes off more as a insecurity than a leadership decision. If I was the leader in that situation I would first check in with myself by making sure my messages were focused, direct and high impact.

But this boss I had was just spamming us with what she was working on for the day for us. Like okay…? I’m excited to see it when it’s done. But idk why I need to send a clapping gif to the progress update.

My Newest Spiritual Journey

This goes with the above thought of “nothing is easy but it doesn’t have to be hard”. This year I’ve been hyper aware and practicing discernment around what is actually hard versus a suffering pity party I am putting on.

I’ve noticed the pity party is easier to put on then actually just doing the work without the sob story behind it. And a lot of times the thing we are pitying about isn’t really that bad. Just do it.

Leila Hormzi has this whole talking point recently on doing the thing even when we’re in a bad mood. Often times she says "Fuck your mood”. It really resonates with me. There are absolutely moments where I need rest and time away, for sure. But there’s also this pocket I like to sit in sometimes where i just want to be whiny because subconsciously it feels safer to wine and not do anything rather than just doing the thing even if I am in a bad mood about it.

There is a toxic female side I am trying to be better at managing and being self aware of. Just because yes, I am emotional and sensitive by nature, does not mean I need to caretake my business development deals that aren’t going my way. I need to just push through the bad mood and negotiate better terms and be willing to walk away. Plain and simple. And honestly, I have a really awesome manager for that. So most of my whiny stress (that comes as an occupational hazard from me willing deciding to become an influencer) isn’t even mine to stress about anymore.

So I am getting way quicker with telling myself to get over myself. And I am loving it.

I just don’t careeee about this outside noise on my phone.

Nothing is That Deep

There’s definitely real suffering. Life is crazy.

And those are moments we need to present for ourselves for. There is real profoundness to sitting with yourself when real shitty moods come up. If we don’t deal with these things, they come back tenfold later.

But then there’s also this other part of my emotional experience I am playing around with a lot right now of just voluntary suffering. Making a big deal and crashing about something when it’s unnecessary.

Nothing that is annoying us on our phones is that deep. It’s not real life. Real life is outside. In our homes. In communication with real people we know IRL. We don’t need to suffer from fake stuff on our phone.