Photo Courtesy of Sarah Gilman
This week, my phone was kind enough to let me know that my screen time has increased 28 percent in the last seven days. On average, it told me, I’ve spent five hours and 45 minutes of my 17 waking hours this week on my phone. Roughly a third of my day. This doesn’t even count my computer use for work. It wasn’t how I wanted to start 2021, tethered to technology, but it also didn’t surprise me. With the insurrection at the Capitol last Wednesday, and the unending “breaking news” alerts since then, anxiety has bubbled up any time I put my phone down for too long, fearful that I’m missing an update, an outcome, anything that could give me a small sense of control in this volatile time.
Of course, the comfort that comes from obsessively monitoring news headlines and social media updates is a fallacy. Mindlessly scrolling on Instagram and Twitter, spinning in a hamster wheel of constantly-refreshing content, posts designed to incite, and memes that simultaneously provide levity and normalize, never really makes me feel better. It’s a distraction—a constant intake of information I’m not stopping to process or think deeply about, but that extracts an emotional toll nonetheless. It’s the equivalent of being lost in the ocean, hopelessly floating yet refusing to put down an anchor to get my bearings.
The Sierra Club’s 1.5 Challenge is an untethering. It’s a chance to devote a part of my day to myself and my mental health. It’s setting aside time in the morning to do something that feeds my soul to start my day with calm and clarity. For me, that looks like walking—sometimes listening to the sounds around me or an audiobook, or calling my sister, a nurse in New York City, to see how she’s doing. It looks like making a cup of coffee in the morning and stretching for 15 minutes. It looks like biking around as the golden light from the setting sun illuminates the streets. For me, the 1.5 Challenge is all about slowing down and being present.
The speed of communication and the transmission of information set the pace of life, and nowadays, that speed is virtually instantaneous. Which means that to be “connected,” you always have to be plugged in. Wired. If your phone is your alarm, you’re online from the second you wake up; going to turn off the alarm only to see four emails from work at 6 A.M. or a news headline that starts your day in the bleakest of mindsets. Then add in quarantine, where more and more interfacing takes place online and the barrier between work and home life blurs more and more each day. To unplug, to switch on Do Not Disturb, feels blasphemous. The doomsday spiraling begins; what if my boss needs me, what if my sister calls, what if my parents are sick, what if, what if, what if.
The 1.5 Challenge asks participants to commit to running 1.5 miles or doing a 15-minute workout every day to raise money for the Sierra Club’s work to stop our planet from warming more than 1.5˚C (2.7˚ F) over preindustrial levels and avert the most devastating effects of the climate crisis. Letting warming increase beyond 1.5˚C would endanger ecosystems and wildlife, and put millions of people at risk of losing their lives and their homes to extreme storms, floods, and fires. Those already marginalized, including women, people in developing countries, Black people, Indigenous people, and other people of color, will feel the effects first and worst.
Very few of us have the time or emotional capacity to stop and read the barrage of headlines about environmental rollbacks, temperatures and sea levels rising, weather worsening, the effects of the climate crisis already being seen and felt. Doing the 1.5 Challenge can help us grow our ability to confront the reality of the climate crisis. Signing up helps fund initiatives that protect our planet, provides you with information on being a part of the climate solution, and connects you to a community of people who share your values and your commitment to a better, more sustainable world. It’s a reminder to take the time you need to remember what’s important to you, how you feel about the world we live in right now, and what you want to do about it.
This month, I’ll be up every morning to go for my 1.5-mile walk. Maybe I’ll see you out there. As I hike up and down Griffith, huffing and puffing under my mask, I’ll stop and look at each passerby on their own small journeys. I’ll wave to other walkers and bikers on their ways. I’ll listen to the sound of the freeway harmonizing with the wind in the trees. Cell phone temporarily forgotten. Taking the time to disconnect.