Man, everyone’s always running around saying they need a “chill week,” but if you look closer, they’re still hitting the gym at 5 AM and checking emails at midnight. We think the fix is some massive life overhaul, right? Like moving to a farm or totally quitting your job. Bull. We search for complicated solutions when sometimes the dumbest, fluffiest places hold the answers. I started looking in the absolute dumbest spot for a tip: the weekly Elle horoscope for Pisces. Yeah, I’m a Pisces, and yeah, I sometimes read the glossy stuff, but I never actually did what they suggested.
The Practice: Shutting Down the Glow
This week, the tip for us fish was so simple it felt like a joke. The whole thing was boiled down to this one line, almost like a command: “Your best simple tip for a chill week: Pick one evening, and absolutely refuse to look at a glowing screen after 7 PM.” That was it. No complicated meditation, no expensive self-care kits. Just turn off the damn phone and walk away. I scoffed. I actually laughed out loud because my whole life is in a glowing box. How do you even do that successfully without cheating?
I knew I couldn’t just leave the phone charging on the counter. The temptation to check that one last work message or see what Twitter was fighting about would be too much. It was about creating a physical, painful-to-cross barrier. So, I chose Wednesday night because it’s usually the worst for catching up on mid-week crud. I set a harsh, jarring alarm for 6:50 PM. I told my wife, “Look, I’m doing this stupid blog experiment, don’t even talk to me after seven unless the house is on fire.” She just rolled her eyes, which, fair enough.
When the alarm screamed its high-pitched little song, I pulled the plug on my desktop, dumped my phone, tablet, and work laptop into a giant, empty plastic laundry basket, and carried the whole glowing, buzzing load out to the cold garage. I didn’t just mute them; I made them physically hard to access. The power button was off. That felt like the essential first step: committing to the complete separation.
What followed was honestly ridiculous. I wandered around the living room for a straight half-hour, like a lost, confused dog, my hands twitching for a scroll. I kept feeling my back pocket, which was totally empty. My brain was buzzing, like an engine running too hot without oil. I tried reading a physical book, but I couldn’t focus on the words; the day’s notifications and problems were still vibrating in my skull.
Finally, out of sheer desperation, I went to the kitchen and decided I had to fix that wobbly shelf in the pantry. You know the one—it’d been slightly off-kilter for about three months. I grabbed a cheap screwdriver and some wood glue. I used my hands. I felt the rough, cheap wood. The process was slow, awkward, and totally boring, but there was no rush, no immediate gratification ding. It was just me, a piece of wood, and the task.
- I measured twice and screwed once.
- I wiped the dust off the brackets with my thumb.
- I waited for the glue to set, just sitting on the floor, doing nothing but looking at the pantry door.
- By 9 PM, the shelf was straight, fixed tight. My hands were sticky with residual glue. And my brain felt… slow. Not empty, but the buzzing was gone. A quiet, deep chill I hadn’t realized I was missing had crept in.
Why Did I Even Bother With This BS?
You might be reading this and thinking, “Dude, it’s a shelf. Who cares?” I care. Because I remember what it’s like when you can’t even find two hours to fix a simple shelf. I know this stuff because of what happened a few years back, which showed me exactly what the screens had actually done to me.
I was working as a technical manager at a place that ran entirely on high stress and endless alerts. We were supposed to be “disruptors,” meaning we worked nonstop. I was pulling 18-hour days, drinking coffee until my stomach hurt, and living for the next notification. My doctor warned me about my blood pressure, my family begged me to slow down, but I shrugged it off. “Gotta hustle, gotta make the numbers,” I said like a broken drone. Then, one Tuesday, it all blew up spectacularly.
I made a stupid, massive mistake—a configuration error from pure, simple exhaustion—that cost the company a big client data stream for four hours. A total rookie error. I offered to fix it, to stay the week, to do anything. The boss nodded and thanked me. The next morning, I showed up for my 8 AM meeting, and my key card didn’t work. My email was deactivated instantly. My company phone was just a dead lump. I called my immediate supervisor; he didn’t answer. I texted my colleagues, and they all suddenly had new numbers or their lines were disconnected. It was like I dropped off the face of the earth. No severance, no explanation. Just completely gone, cut off. The silence was suffocating.
I spent the next six months completely adrift, checking that dead phone for phantom notifications. I kept waiting for the apology call or the explanation that never came. My savings drained fast. I had to take a job fixing things and doing basic construction work just to keep the rent paid while I figured out my next move. It felt humiliating, going from “Senior Architect” to “Guy Who Can’t Use a Hammer Straight.” That whole period, away from the glow, I realized the screens were not my tools; they were my cage. They fed the hustle that broke me. The lack of chill had made me expensive and disposable.
The screen-less Wednesday finally clicked with that old, raw pain. The simple act of not looking for validation or distraction in a bright box was the real chill. The Elle horoscope didn’t save my career, but it pushed me to recreate that quiet, screen-free focus I stumbled into when I had to fix things with my own hands to survive. Now I make sure I have at least two “No-Glow” nights a week. I don’t need an astrologer to tell me how to chill, but sometimes you need a stupid, simple little nudge to remember what being a slow, physical, ordinary human feels like.
