You have things you want to do, but there’s just never time. Maybe you want to find someone to have kids with, or maybe you want to spend more or higher-quality time with the family you already have. Maybe it’s a work project. Maybe you have a musical instrument or some sports equipment gathering dust in a closet, or there’s something you loved doing when you were younger that you want to get back into. Whatever it is, you can’t find the time for it. And yet you somehow find thousands of hours a year to watch YouTube, check Twitter and Instagram, listen to podcasts, binge Netflix shows, and read blogs and news articles.

You can’t focus. You haven’t read a physical book in years, and the time you tried it was boring and you felt itchy and you think maybe books are outdated when there’s so much to read on the internet anyway. You’re talking with a friend, but then your phone buzzes and you look at the notification and you open it, and your girlfriend has messaged you and that’s nice, and then your friend says “Did you hear what I just said?” and you say “What?”.

You find yourself constantly checking your phone. You used to have a rule against having your phone in bed, but now it’s your alarm clock, and scrolling helps wake you up in the morning and calm you down at bedtime, even if you often find yourself staying up later than you meant to. You check your phone before you do anything else in the morning, just in case, and then you take it into the bathroom with you because peeing and brushing your teeth are boring without it.

You used to tell yourself you’d never use your phone in the car, but of course you need it for directions, so it’s always right there. And surely there’s no harm in texting someone your ETA when you’re stopped at a red light, everyone does that – and then you look up and all the other cars have gone because the light turned green a while ago. Or you find yourself pulling out your phone even when the car is moving, but it’s a straight road and there’s no one there, so it’s probably okay, even though if you saw someone else doing it you’d think they were irresponsible.

Your phone is really useful. It keeps you in contact with your friends and family, and keeps you from ever getting lost. You know that if there’s ever an emergency you’ll be able to call for help. You feel secure being able to call Ubers and look up whether that restaurant is open right now and pay for things even if you forget your wallet.

Your phone is precious to you. You get massive separation anxiety when you’re away from it. You used to sometimes leave your house without your phone, but now you can’t imagine how you’d do that or why you’d want to.

You’re never truly off the clock. You can get notified about a work email any time, no matter where you are, and you’re a bad worker if you don’t respond to all your emails promptly, because everyone else does. You have to have Slack on your phone and tap it every few minutes so that your status is always Active, or else people will think you’re not working. Your work laptop is your home laptop, so you could always be working on that project you haven’t finished, even on the weekend, even at 2 AM.

You’re in a constant state of stress. There’s a dozen bad things happening in the world every day, and you hear about all of them immediately. The world you live in is rife with crime and genocide and scandal and political catastrophe. People are wrong on the internet constantly, and the world is falling apart, and if you don’t stay informed and up to date, that’s a moral failing. Your heartbeat is elevated and your breathing is shallow and you haven’t slept well in a year.

You’re not in control. On your day off, you open your laptop first thing in the morning, and suddenly it’s five hours later and you haven’t eaten anything or brushed your teeth, and you can’t even say what you were doing on your laptop, because it wasn’t anything in particular.

This isn’t how you would have chosen to live, if you had thought about it beforehand. If you had been given a choice.

But you weren’t.