Logging Off

by Spalding, Nick

  Jesus Christ.

  It’s either stabbing pain, or a return to the Dark Ages.

  I’m not so sure which is worse, to be honest with you . . .

  DIGITAL DETOXING AND YOU!

  A GUIDE TO LIVING WITH THE BEST VERSION OF YOURSELF!

  Thank you for taking the time to read this informative guide about how to make your life a calmer, better place – without the need for the digital world!

  In today’s society, we are bombarded by a constant stream of information, and that isn’t good for our BRAINS!

  If you spend too much time on the Internet – using social media, playing games or just mindlessly surfing websites, you could be doing real damage to your MIND and BODY!

  You’ve been given this information guide to show you what you should do if you want to make a digital detox part of your life – and trust us, it will be worth it! The results are AMAZING!

  There are some simple rules to follow:

  No unnecessary use of the Internet

  The Internet is a part of our lives that isn’t going away, but you should only use it when you have to – for work or emergencies. Answer those work emails, but stay away at all other times!

  No use of social media

  At all! We have become far too reliant on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Instead of using them, communicate with people by picking up a phone or arranging to meet with them. It will be completely WORTH IT!

  No online gaming

  In fact, try not to play video games at all. Instead, go outside and play with a ball, or go for a lovely, long walk. Try activities that get you up and about, instead of glued to a screen with a controller in your hand!

  Avoid temptation

  The easiest way to avoid the temptation of going back to the digital world is to make sure you don’t have anything around you that can access it. Swap your smartphone for a landline. Store your tablet away, and pick up a book instead. Keep your PC at home somewhere out of sight.

  Remember to enjoy your new-found freedom!

  This is the most important thing! You’re starting a new, calmer, happier life by doing this digital detox. It’s a chance for you to reconnect with the people you love, and the world around you. Use the time you would have spent online on new, beneficial hobbies. Try meditation or yoga, or take up a sport, or try a bit of writing. The world is your oyster! ENJOY IT!

  How Long Should You Detox?

  We recommend a period of at least two months. Yes, just sixty days can show you how much better off you can be! So, give it a go! It will change your life, we absolutely PROMISE!

  Chapter Three

  THE DETOXIFICATION OF ANDY BELLOWS

  It’s quite clear to me that ‘Digital Detoxing and You!’ was written by a raving psychopath.

  No one with a grip on their sanity would structure sentences like that, or use quite so many exclamation marks.

  If you met someone who talked the way that damn thing is written, you’d be backing away slowly, and speed-dialling 999.

  If doing a digital detox turns you into the kind of person who thinks writing that many random words in capital letters is perfectly OK, then I don’t want to be any part of it.

  But.

  And it’s a big BUT – most certainly written in capital letters, and probably in a bold font.

  I have to do something. I have to make some changes.

  I woke up at 3 a.m. last night, and stayed awake for two hours. Snoregasbord said I only got about an hour’s deep sleep.

  This morning, I am as constipated as everybody’s favourite plasticine-eating dog, and there’s a very tight feeling in my jaw that I don’t like one little bit.

  I’ve taken three Anadin Extra to try to stave off those sharp, stabbing temple pains, and I’m hoping they’ll also take care of the ache in my neck that came on almost the instant I picked up my iPad.

  I’ve spent the morning googling digital detoxes to see if anyone can give me any advice that can help me.

  The Internet is full of conflicting reports on their effectiveness. Some people swear by them, some people think they are the work of the devil.

  This is no surprise.

  I’ve already proved that one of the laws of the Internet is if you punch a load of symptoms into a search engine, it gets you diagnosed with terminal cancer every single time. Another law is that if you seek an opinion on a subject matter – any subject you like – you will get as much fulsome support for it as you do harsh criticism.

  The law holds true even if we’re talking about the greatest evils ever visited upon mankind. You can find people who will actively defend Hitler, the Ebola virus and Hanson – believe it or not.

  Needless to say, digital detoxing is regarded as being the best thing ever, or the biggest waste of time on the planet, depending on who you ask.

  In disgust, I throw the iPad down and cross my arms over my chest in a grump of the highest order. None of that helped one bit. I’m back to having to make a decision on my own.

  . . .

  I’m going to have to bloody do it, aren’t I?

  I’m going to have to give this stupid digital-detox thing a go.

  As I sit here, I can hear my bowels rumbling in a manner that means I’m going to have to remain close to a toilet for the entire day, and the Anadin Extra really aren’t strong enough to counter-attack that stupid stabbing pain I’m getting in my head, thanks to all the jaw-clenching.

  Sixty days.

  It can’t be that bad, can it?

  I’m not being asked to give everything up forever. Just for a couple of months.

  Two months really isn’t all that long a period of time. I should be able to cope, surely?

  . . .

  Bollocks.

  Let’s give it a go.

  It takes me about twenty minutes to find my old landline phone, which is in a box at the top of the cupboard in the spare bedroom. I haven’t used the thing in yonks, but it still works – the dial tone still sounds loud and strong as I put my ear to the receiver, having plugged the phone back into the phone socket on the kitchen wall for the first time in about six years.

  The dial tone sounds strange and alien to me, but there’s also something ever so slightly comforting about it, for some reason. I think it probably has something to do with the nostalgia of it all. The memories of years gone by, when things seemed so much simpler.

  I remember the time before the Internet, and this dial tone feels strangely symbolic of it.

  Of course, I’m going to have to update my work website and all of my contacts with the landline number, because I haven’t given it out publicly for a very long time – but the evil pamphlet says I’m still allowed to use emails purely for work purposes, so it shouldn’t be all that difficult.

  Having reconnected the ancient device, I then find a big cardboard box, into which I place my iPhone, iPad, PlayStation, Alexa and Kindle.

  I can’t fit my TV in there, as it’s got a 55-inch screen, but I can unplug the Ethernet cable, wipe all of the apps and turn off the Wi-Fi, so it can’t go online any more.

  The iMac has to stay out for obvious reasons – I can scarcely run a graphic design business without my computer – but that is safely tucked away in one corner of the spare bedroom, and I can shut the door on it when I need to.

  I sellotape the cardboard box up, pop it on top of the cupboard where I found the old phone, and take a few deep breaths.

  Well, there we go, then.

  Like a cigarette smoker who has just thrown his last packet away, I have divested myself of my addictions as much as I possibly can. Now all that remains is to go online for one final time and let everyone know that I’m doing a two-month-long digital detox.

  It doesn’t take me that much time to compose a suitable post, which I can copy and paste across all of my social media accounts and public forums. The only one that gives me any difficulty is Instagram, because I have to accompany the message with a suitable pictur
e. What kind of picture can you use to denote the fact that you’re taking a break from all of this wonderful online jiggery-pokery in order to improve your health?

  I elect for an image of a small puppy being told off for peeing on the carpet. I can’t tell you why, but it feels appropriate.

  The response I get from my small accumulation of online followers is largely to be expected. Most are quite supportive, some are confused, a few are highly amused, and a minority are actually angry at me for having the temerity to blame the online world for any of my problems.

  I’m willing to bet they are the kinds of people who could probably do with a detox themselves.

  Good old Jerry Pimbleton sounds quite disappointed that he won’t be able to cross verbal swords with me about the local building works for the foreseeable future. Apparently, the company that are throwing up the new houses on the site of the old dairy farm have put up a sign saying that construction begins soon – and Jerry is clearly not happy about it.

  Well, he’ll just have to vent to someone else, as I’m not going to be around.

  I have to confess, I do feel a small sense of relief about this. The ongoing argument with Jerry is meaningless to me in the grand scheme of things, and it was something I’d probably begun to invest too much of myself in. I don’t really care that much about whether they build on the land or not, if I’m honest.

  Wow.

  OK. That’s interesting. Maybe this enforced period offline will come with some advantages, after all . . .

  I spend a fairly constructive final hour on the Internet, replying to the goodwill messages I receive about my attempt to do the detox. It’s only polite, and they really are a good bunch, when you get right down to it. I may not know many of their real names, and have no idea what a lot of them look like, but they’ve been a good circle of friends to me over the past few years. I shall miss them while I’m away.

  With my replies completed and my goodbyes said, I shut down the iMac and spend a few seconds staring at the blank screen.

  ‘Right then. That’s that,’ I say into the void.

  The black, horrible void . . .

  No. Come on, Andrew. Don’t be like that. This is a good thing. This is a positive thing. This is a thing that you shall do, and be proud of when you have finished.

  ‘Yes. I shall be proud,’ I say, still looking at the black screen.

  Get up out of this chair and go and do something constructive.

  I get up out of the chair and go to find something constructive to do.

  Like tidy my kitchen cupboards.

  Yes! That is the kind of very constructive thing I can do, now that I have the free time to do so.

  That takes fifteen minutes.

  So then I decide to have a nice vacuum.

  That takes a further twenty minutes.

  What else?

  I spend the rest of the afternoon giving my flat the kind of deep clean that it will probably never recover from.

  By the time the shower grout has been divested of all its mould growth, I have reached teatime, and am feeling quite good about myself.

  I haven’t once thought about going online. It’s a little hard to when you’re up to your elbows in bleach.

  With the flat cleaner than the cleanest of the newest of new pins, I feel a rumble in my stomach as I behold the new world order that I have wrought upon my living space.

  It looks splendid.

  And it’s clearly time to eat something.

  The problem is, I don’t want to ruin the kitchen. It’s not been this clean since the day the building work was finished, and I’d like it to stay that way for a little while longer.

  I’ll just pop on Deliveroo and order myself a Chines—

  My hand is halfway to my pocket before I remember.

  Shit.

  There will be no ordering of Chinese food for me. Unless I decide to – aaarrggghh – pick up the phone and give them a call.

  No. I can’t do that. I’ll just have to order a pizza instead.

  But I don’t know the number for the pizza place.

  Come to think of it, I don’t know the number for the Chinese restaurant either.

  I’ll have to go out and actually look for food.

  Like some kind of Neanderthal.

  Bugger.

  Still, at least that will kill some more time, won’t it? Searching for appropriate fast food without any online help should take a good half an hour or so.

  ‘Yes. That is what I will do,’ I say, into the void once more.

  I have never spoken to myself this much in my entire life. Not out loud, anyway. I hope this isn’t indicative of things to come.

  I grab my car keys and walk out of my pristine flat, on the hunt for some tasty treats.

  It’s three hours later.

  I am starving.

  It’s not that I’ve been unable to find any takeaways (although they all appear to be a lot further from my front door than I’d thought), it’s just that I have no idea which one I should order from.

  How the hell are you supposed to know whether you’re getting good food or not, if you don’t have an app to tell you what the reviews for it are?

  I have been in an agony of indecision as I drive between the local Chinese, Thai, Indian, pizza and kebab restaurants, just trying to make my stupid mind up.

  God knows how much petrol I’ve used.

  The various staff at the takeaways have become very used to seeing my stricken face as I stare at their menus, unable to do so much as decide on what cuisine I want, let alone what specific meal I want to order.

  In the end – and to avoid an incipient nervous breakdown – I buy a chicken and bacon sandwich from the garage, after I’ve filled up the tank. It looks limp and very boring, but it was either that or go back to A Taste of Siam and spend another twenty minutes staring at the girl behind the counter with a confused look on both our faces.

  At home, I devour the sandwich.

  I then make myself a larger and more filling bacon and egg sandwich in the kitchen – ruining my excellent cleaning job completely.

  When bedtime more or less rolls around, I am stuffed with bread and feeling dreadfully anxious.

  It’s at this time of night I usually sit down with my iPad and surf, and the absence of it is making my palms a bit sweaty. I try to watch some TV, but there’s nothing on I fancy watching, and the news is just too miserable, so I turn the box off and stare once more into the void.

  That gets me absolutely nowhere, so I figure I might as well go to bed.

  According to Dr Hu, I should sleep much better, having not spent most of the evening with the iPad surgically attached to my hand.

  He’s wrong, of course.

  It takes me bloody ages to get to sleep.

  Mainly because I have a small but permanent niggle at the back of my head that I’ve gone to bed without having done something vitally important . . .

  If you can call checking all of your social media accounts ‘vitally important’, that is.

  But that’s been my routine for the past several years, and not doing it makes me feel decidedly apprehensive and out of sorts.

  So much so that it’s gone two in the morning before I do finally get off to sleep.

  It’s only a quarter past six when I wake up, with that feeling of apprehension now having ballooned into something approaching a real sense of dread.

  The dreams didn’t help.

  The first involved me standing naked in the middle of the Apple Store. The really big one on Regent Street. I’m holding my penis for dear life in the dream, as several Apple Geniuses – all holding scissors – try to tell me I’d be better off without it.

  ‘But I want my penis!’ I shout at them. ‘I need my penis!’

  These pleas fall on deaf ears, though, and they start to pursue me around the shop. They’re just about to pin me down by the overpriced phone cases when I am woken by the urge to urinate. I do so with my heart beating out of my che
st, and a grip on my penis that is just this side of too tight.

  The second dream, if anything, is even worse.

  In this one, I am standing on the pavement of a busy street. The people rush past me like a fast-flowing river, with me like a rock cast into its chaotic stream.

  Behind me, I can feel . . . something.

  A presence so vast and overwhelming, it terrifies me to my very core.

  I try to move. I try to get away from the thing. But I am frozen to the spot.

  So I call out to the people passing me by, screaming at them as loud as I can that I need help – that I need saving. But none of them can hear me. They just continue to flow past, completely ignoring my pitiful cries.

  Just as I feel something touch me on the shoulder, I awake in a cold sweat.

  ‘Oh, for the love of God!’ I cry out loud into the void, as I sit bolt upright in bed, breathing hard.

  I’ve never had dreams as bad as that before. Not having a clue what they mean, I reach over to grab my iPhone so I can look them up online—

  ‘Oh, fuck it!’ I cry in frustration.

  With this hideous start to the day over and done with, I climb out of bed and try to get moving.

  This is extremely hard, as I’m sleep-deprived and a bundle of tight nerves due to my inability to satiate my desire to have a look on Twitter.

  I just have to drink a cup of coffee, settle down into some work, and get through what is already turning out to be a highly miserable day.

  Did I say miserable?

  I meant soul-destroying.

  It’s throughout the next few hours that I really come to appreciate the depths of my reliance on the digital world.

  I feel antsy all day.

  I’ve never felt antsy before in my entire life. It’s an extremely unpleasant feeling.

  I also feel twitchy.

  There’s a good chance ‘antsy’ and ‘twitchy’ mean exactly the same thing, but I’m not allowed to go on Google to check, so you’ll just have to put up with the mistake – if I’ve actually made one.

  I’m so twitchy that I’m finding it hard to concentrate on work.

  I’m in the middle of putting together another presentation of my graphical prowess – this time for a pie shop, rather than a hot and trendy clothing brand. OK, pies aren’t exciting in the slightest, and the job won’t pay a great deal even if I do get it, but at least it’s an easy project. There’s only really so much you can do with a pie, graphically speaking. Because it’s a pie.