When I started this project in July, I clearly had no idea what I was getting myself into.
If I did, it would not have fallen flat, taking two months to return.

And I can’t remember what I wrote those first two blogposts, which were released shortly after each other. If you want, you can read them under the category Gen X diary

I’m here because I got two wake up calls, that both reminded me:

“Hey, you!
Yes you, Suzanne!
How about your 20th century life?!”

Wakeup calls that have brought me back here, writing. And I am not betting my newly found 20th century life on it, that I have all of the pitfalls covered;
But things have definitely changed, with an all new plan to nail it this time.

The first wakeup call was a reread of a post I wrote for my Secret Diary on Substack. It’s one of the few free/open ones, and you can read it here.
And if you want to unlock all episodes, then become a paid subscriber.
But this one is on me.

The diary entry was about Austin Butler, an actor at the heart of the Millennial generation.
Since I am at the center of Generation X, we are separated by exactly one generation.
The blogpost was about how Austin Butler had totally nailed living a 20th century life.

He doesn’t flaunt it, but I recognize a paper notebook carrying, leather boots wearing, analog camera savvy 20th century dweller when I see one.

Rereading it reminded me of my abandoned quest for a 20th Century Life, and with it this abandoned Gen X diary as well.
It also rekindled a professional fire, that I want to dedicate the rest of my life -which I intend to be a tremendously long stretch- to being a 20th century writer.

I want to be the one who chose to stay behind, surrounded by 20th century topics, and view them with the context of still living offline myself.
Of having thrown my timeline in reverse when I was halfway, choosing to go back instead, because I recognized that the work I came here to do was to be done from there.
Not from moving forward with the rest of us.

I can’t remember if I shared this in the first two posts, or if I had even had this insight yet, but this whole being a guardian of the 20th century-stuff, really shot root the moment I set a very old age for myself.
If I succeed, then at a certain point I will be one of the very few still living, who are from the 20th century.

That was the moment this half-baked idea or inspiration to live in a 20th century way, and not online/ digitally – a concept I have been toying with since 2019- really acquired its meaning.
It now had its Why.

So, again, I don’t know if that part, about setting myself up to have a very long lifespan, if that was already a thing the last time I wrote you.
But it is now, so when I reread that Austin Butler post, I now had both his inspiration, of seeing someone so young really rocking that analog lifestyle;
And I also had my deeply rooted Why, of wanting to do this.
Seeing this was my work, as a writer.

The Austin Butler post was the first wakeup call, and then at night I got the second.
Which was so dry, so simple, so bland really, that I kept staring at the page, feeling all the emotions it brought up for me.
It was like the full magnitude of a problem I had vastly underestimated revealed itself, triggered by something that was almost arbitrary.

The word I read was:
“Addiction.”

And it came from the introduction of Nikki Sixx’ Heroin Diaries. A year-long outtake from his 80s diaries, Christmas to Christmas. He was a world famous rock star with his band Mötley Crüe, and so addicted no one held it possible he would see the next decade.
He overdosed twice to the point of being pronounced dead on at least one of those two occasions, and probably both.
I listened to the audiobook version years ago, and from what I recall he died twice. And rose twice.

But now I was in bed, opening the 10th anniversary 2017 edition of the Heroin Diaries, which is an absolute work of art with beautiful graphic design and glossy pages, and all in my favorite rock star colors (are there any others? black and red!), and I didn’t get past the introduction which was an A-Z lexicon of Wikipedia definitions.

Addiction:
A compulsion to repeat a behavior regardless of its consequences.

And:

It is quite common for an addict to express the desire to stop the behavior but find himself unable to cease.

In favor of the book, I do want to point out the Wikipedia list of definitions is counterbalanced by the addict’s definition of these words, on the next page.
Nikki Sixx did not write an AA manual here.

So fast forwarding, that definition reads:

Addiction
When you can give up something anytime, as long as it’s next Tuesday.

And I realized I was addicted to using my internet connection.

I don’t have any apps or notifications on my phone.

So if you wonder why I only do grid posting on Instagram, no stories, and why tagging/ links/ pins are absent?
You now know why!
They don’t work on desktop.

But despite having such a clean phone, I was still compulsive with my internet browser, checking email and news.
And on my desktop I was also always logged on to Instagram and Twitter/X.

I used my internet access as a pacifier, the way I once used smoking.

And although of course, there have been days, weeks even, when I stayed clean and enjoyed the bliss of the offline 20th century life I had promised myself;
And with the reward of being able to face any future Austin Butlers in my life, standing firmly in my own 20th century boots!;
 I had not done it understanding the severity of the situation.

That I was dealing with a digital addiction.

And frankly, I also think that concepts like digital detox or digital minimalism, are also poor words to give this whole thing some weight.
I mean, yes, if you read the books they will spell out for you how your whole brain is highjacket by the neurological rewards internet algorithms give you.
And yet;
These books are not printed red to black, with letters brutally scratched into them. And words like “harrowing” and “heartbreaking” on the back.

Despite users of digital media (effectively, all of us) having their entire brain, free will and wallet, ravaged by algorithms and having virtually no control over it;
We are still not addressing people throwing away their lives this way.

We do not feel the same urgency as when witnessing addiction to drugs or alcohol.

Even obesity, a food addiction, for better or for worse, generates more attention than the fact that anyone with notifications on their phone or opening digital media hoping for a dopamine hit;
Is addicted to internet.

Whether I start counting in 2019 or last summer;
I stepped into this whole living a 20th century life thing with the same stubborn denial as 1986 Nikki Sixx thinking he could quit heroin any time.
Instead of realizing it had already taken our lives, figuratively speaking.

What binds us, 1986 Nikki Sixx and me, is that we both let it get out of hand, and that what we both held onto, was a diary.

But what I will do now, just like he did, is to quit and to recover.
And beat the harrowing odds all addicts share.

Because if he did it, an 80s rock star who outdid all the others in terms of what he used and consumed, and no one thought he would get through;
Then obviously, it can be done.

And not next Tuesday.

.
Suzanne L. Beenackers
20th century writer, diarist & yoga teacher

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“Quitting digital addiction. 80s Style”
is the third Gen X diary entry. 

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