Leaning into Inconvenience as a Source of Well-being

How taking the more difficult road may be more rewarding in the end

With this week’s twist of events, I think many of us are taking a cold, hard, look in the mirror and beginning to question our tendencies of what we’ve bought into as consumers of the private industry in our country.

I personally, am tuning into what I have control over and taking small intentional action to adjust my own behavior as a consumer. One thing that has woken me up, is the pervasive convenience these companies have “offered” us in exchange for our attention. But the convenience these monopoly companies have offered, has evidently come at a cost that we are just beginning pay for.

With social media, I have also become complacent in the convenience of just simply opening an app to check in on my friends and see what they all are up to at the same time. I could rather pick up the phone and check in with the people I care about most in a more qualitative and fulfilling way. These platforms continue to engage me with the lure of social connection only to slowly drip into what has now become a massive marketing platform. I now follow more accounts of people and companies I do not personally know, than my own friends. And, I’ve been marketed by the click of a button to consume and buy more of things I just simply do not need. Not to mention, the engagement went from beautiful imagery of my friends lives to overstimulating short video clips of nonsense. With the dismantling of fact-checking and algorithms used to divide us, this tool that seemingly was meant to be used to bring people together, is driving us all into a deeper pit of loneliness and despair.

With online retail, I began using one well-known company to sometimes buy household items that I needed. Then one day, they began expedited shipping and created a cool little device I could read all my books on. The next thing you know, I look up and realize that so many other businesses and book stores I also bought from are gone. And, the grocery store I shop at is owned by this retailer too. The latest is my doctor’s office now belongs to that same company. And suddenly, I’m being advertised prescription medication when I look to buy face wash online.

What started out as a simple tool to fulfill basic necessities of household cleaner, or social connection, has morphed into a monstrous marketing scheme for me to buy more and pay attention less to what is trying to control me. And what these companies have offered at the outset, has slowly been whittled down to lower quality products, lower quality connection, and lower quality service in exchange. This week’s optics at a large scale political event, was a warning, a last opportunity to wake up and choose. And as painful as it is to rip the band aid off, I’m choosing the more difficult road. I will choose to live a more inconvenient life.

I’m not rejecting these tools outright, but I am electing to go the hard way more often. Frankly because my sense of free-will and right to choose matters too much. I will reach out to the friend and make concrete plans to catch up and hear about their vacation. And you as my friend, won’t be able to reach me and see a snippet of what’s happening in my life anymore, so please reach out and stay connected. I’ll be getting in the car to drive the 30+ min to go from store to store to find that item that I need. Or, I will be ordering online but simply waiting the 1-2 weeks for shipping. My life inherently will begin to move at a slower, more stagnant pace. The pace it should have been running at all along. My existence this week has been refreshingly under-stimulating and present, rather than gnawingly overstimulated and distracted.

Some of these life changes and adjustments will take more grit. I’ve been calling and waiting on hold for countless doctor’s offices to find a new physician rather than logging into an app and having a doctor’s appointment within the hour. I am going back to the drawing board and rebuilding entire marketing strategies for my decade-old business to account for more outreach, agility, patience, and time.

But grit is good. Grit is giving me back the agency of choice again. Grit is teaching me to be empowered within myself. To not sell off the shares of my life, my business, and my time to these companies, but to keep what is sacred as something I own. And grit is teaching me that I may have made a mistake at 16 years old to join a social media network while I was supposed to be doing my homework, but that I can begin again and slowly with intentional action, curate the content of the life I choose to live.