Splash No. 246 - Concussion
Concussion
When I travel, I like to think of myself as someone who doesn’t only do touristy things. So, during my trip to Japan, I decided that I needed to see things that most folks don’t by getting a concussion from a low ceiling and going to a local Japanese hospital to get a CT scan. Thankfully, the Japanese healthcare system is solid and I’m doing completely fine, but recovering from my concussion over the last week or so has been interesting.
My symptoms have been pretty tame — I was terribly tired in the first few days, have had recurring headaches and neck pain, and have had trouble with screens in general since they were giving me headaches and nausea. With each passing day, these symptoms have reduced, as I’ve altered my behavior to recover as quickly as possible.
This isn’t my first rodeo in having a concussion, but some time has passed since my last one that required extensive recovery. The last one like that was back in 2016, when I went home to my parents’ house and was able to spend the greater part of a week without looking at any screens and just passing my time listening to audiobooks. I would pace around the house throughout the day and talk with my parents until I could get as much sleep as possible. It wasn’t too hard to avoid using my phone.
What I discovered this time around is that it’s a lot harder to live without using screens in 2023, especially if you have to travel thousands of miles while you’re recovering. Even after my ten hour flight of listening to audiobooks and getting home, even basic tasks like getting food or staying connected with my family and friends required at least some interfacing with my phone.
On my first day back in San Francisco, I had grown tired of audiobooks and audio content in general and I had a lot more energy, so I decided to try and be outside as much as possible and minimize screen time. It was one of the best days I had had in a while, as I spent the day talking to my friends on the phone for a while before going to a classical music concert, hanging out with a friend, and chatting with my roommate for several hours. In the ensuing days, rain covered the city and I spent more time in bed doing nothing. Without realizing, my screen time slowly ticked up without me realizing, even as it made me feel ill. Was I so addicted that even physical discomfort wasn’t enough to wretch myself away from it?
And now, when I’m mostly back to normal, I almost miss the time when I couldn’t tolerate to look at my screen, how I would just spend time staring off into space, even as the people around me looked down into their phones. It feels like screens and phones have injected themselves into my life more and more in the last few years and it took a head injury to extricate myself from it all, even if it was just a little bit. I’m listening to more audiobooks again instead of just staring at my phone in my free time, but I still have a long way to go.
Drops of the Week
ARTICLE - "Tumblr Poet Laureate" by Terry Nguyen - cool Dirt piece about Anne Carson and tumblr poetry
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Back in town,
Nikhil