Confronting, then connecting - lessons from a weekend offline
"Logging off didn’t make me lonely — it made me feel deeply accompanied." Guest Newsletter by Anya Salisbury
I have never once thought I am addicted to my phone. I grew up in an era where social media and iPhones really came into fruition when I was twelve, and even then the landscape of social media and phone reliance was almost unrecognisable compared to how it shows up now. It felt slower, clunkier, more optional. But somewhere along the way, I lost track.
I only truly realised how reliant I was on my phone when I was forced to be without it. No service. A small cabin. The middle of nowhere. I stayed in an Unyoked cabin tucked into Jamberoo, a place that quite literally removes you from signal and gently dares you to sit with yourself. The trip was actually gifted to me, which you’d think I might take offence to — the implication of being on my phone too much. But quite the opposite. I was gifted this experience because of how much I love being off my phone, and how, sadly, I sometimes need an ‘excuse’ to do it.
Arriving after a long drive winding deeper into Jamberoo, all I felt was excitement. Something new. New landscapes. A new way of living for two nights. Bliss. I romanticised it instantly, the quiet, the trees, the novelty of it all. But it struck me that the only other times I’ve been forced to log off have been accidental: losing my phone, service dropping out, watching the battery die at the worst possible moment. When you lose your phone, it feels like losing a part of you. Because our phones are no longer just phones. They hold our bank cards, our calendars, our notes app confessions, our proof of existence. They are our connection to everyone, and without warning, that connection can be cut.
That initial panic absolutely arrived. The instinct to reach for something that wasn’t there. The phantom vibration. The urge to document, to check, to share. But after that feeling passed, two overwhelming and unexpected things settled into the cabin with me: creativity and intimacy.
Creativity arrived first. Slowly, then all at once. With nothing to scroll, nothing to consume, my mind began creating instead. Thoughts stretched out. Ideas felt fuller. Time expanded. They say boredom is the birthplace of creativity, and I couldn’t affirm that sentiment more. I wrote without editing myself. I cooked without rushing. I stared out the window without narrating it. There was no algorithm guiding my attention, just my own curiosity. And it made me realise how often our most creative selves are drowned out by constant input. We don’t lack ideas; we lack silence.
Then came intimacy — not just with another person, but with myself. Without distraction, everything felt closer. Conversations were slower and more present. Even the mundane became meaningful: making a cup of coffee through a strainer, walking with no podcast in my ear, watching the sky change colour. There was no audience, no performance. Just being. Intimacy, I realised, requires presence, and presence is the first thing to disappear when we are tethered to our phones. Logging off didn’t make me lonely — it made me feel deeply accompanied.
I’m not saying we need to cut out phones completely. That would essentially exile us from regular human existence. Phones connect us, inspire us, and in many ways, support us. But what this experience clarified for me was the need for stronger digital boundaries. A more conscious relationship with technology. To ask myself: what actually feeds my creativity? What genuinely nurtures connection?
For me, I landed on FaceTime and Pinterest — tools that foster closeness and imagination rather than comparison or urgency. But this will look different for everyone. Logging off isn’t about restriction; it’s about discernment. About choosing depth over noise.
The confronting part of logging off isn’t the absence of your phone — it’s what fills the space when it’s gone. And if we’re brave enough to sit in that space, even briefly, we might remember parts of ourselves we didn’t realise we’d been neglecting.
Anya-Rose Salisbury is a Sydney Logging Off Club facilitator, writer and the founder of @navigating.grief.as.a.teenager.
Brilliant reflection. The line about needing an 'excuse' to disconnect really captures somethingg we don't talk about enuf. I did a similar forced-offline retreat lastyear and found the same creativity burst, but the harder part was keeping those boundaries when I got back to normal life. Once algorithmic input floods back, it's tough to remeber what actual silence feels like.