i don’t think i’m better than you. 

i don’t think i’m better than you because i’m not better than you. 

it feels important for you to know that because for the entirety of this project i’m going to be explaining and, in some ways defending, a choice i make that is different from most of you.  and different does not mean better.  it just means different. 

i don’t share this project to convert you to my way.  i don’t share it for the sake of bolstering non-conformity.  i don’t share it to be ‘right’, to be commended, or applauded.  on the contrary, i have been called crazy, inauthentic, and ‘unwilling to be transparent’ because of this choice.  i’ve been told i don’t truly believe these things, but instead use them as an excuse to hide, where it’s safe, where i can remain in the shadows. 

i understand that what i posit in this counter-cultural pile of words is not common.  it may sound unreasonable.  it certainly isn’t mainstream.  it’s definitely not popular. 

but this topic has risen to the top of our interactions again and again.  it’s the chapter of Dig that elicited the most emails and texts.  it’s the thing people shared the most, cried over the most, and the topic that awakened hard questions and even harder conversations.  because i think this is something people want, but don’t believe they can have.  it’s a kind of freedom, and it’s a freedom unlike most others. 

most freedoms are not the choice of the subject.  one is held captive, or has something withheld from them, or is constrained, or is abused, and it is completely out of the subject’s control.  it is unjust.  it is a violence outside the one subjected to it. 

this is not that. 

this is a freedom readily available.  one in which you alone hold the very key you seek. 

let me be fair – i am assuming that you are chained and you may not be.  it may be the case that at the end of reading you look around and say, ‘hey, i’m not chained.  who do you think you are?”.  if that’s you, wonderful.  but if at the end, one human is just a little freer than before – my efforts will have been worth every strain. 

i’ve sought to present this in a way that doesn’t feel condemning, but at the same time, may incite new questions in your soul.  i don’t want you to feel criticized or judged, or that i for some reason think i have a say in the choices you make – i don’t.  i simply feel an urgency to share my experience with you because it is a place of great freedom; it’s a source of deep stillness; it’s a wellspring of peace, and if you want it, i want you to have it too. 

i fought the instinct to release this project for a long time, primarily out of fear.  i know this stands against a universally accepted cultural norm.  i know i’m the weird one out here.  the sheer volume of rejections by publishers will prove that.  but at the end of the day, my objective is to use the words i’m given as well as i can, and these are truths to my experience that i can no longer keep.  so here it is:

this is life without social media. 

this is life. Unchained. 

love, Nic