🌿 tech_care[1]: give yourself time to rest

and finding rest in un/rest

Welcome to Tech Care, where we explore what it means to build tech that cares, so that we can take care — of ourselves, our communities, and the world around us. You can find past issues here, and join us here:

🌸 musings in full bloom today:

• Building cities while you sleep, creating an evening routine that you look forward to, and taking digital detoxes

• Rest as the foundation of Buddhist meditation

• Navigating the relationship between social media and social un/rest

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Hi friends,

This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of un/rest. From the shooting of Daunte Wright to the shooting of Adam Toledo to the shooting at the Indianapolis Fedex Facility, my heart has felt really, really heavy. After only recently coming to terms with the Atlanta shootings, this past week has reignited a deep anger, frustration, and sadness that drives me to do whatever I can to support the victims and their loved ones, while also supporting work to overhaul a deeply flawed structural system.

However, as important as it is to create unrest and resistance in the face of injustice, I’ve quickly realized that doing both tirelessly without giving yourself time to rest will lead to burnout, especially for those coming from marginalized communities. The maintenance of flawed structural systems relies on this burnout, so it is even more essential to stress the importance of rest. In many ways, you can’t have “unrest” without rest, so let’s explore how we can hold space for both.

With this in mind, I’d love to check-in with you: how are you taking time to rest today? Feel free to hit reply and let me know, leave a comment, or share on Twitter via the check-in question below:

Tech Care @_techcare

🌿 Care Check-in: How are you taking time to rest today?

🍵 Conversations of Care: Rest

Every week, we’ll use this section to explore what it means to practice self, community, and structural care, and if/how technology plays a role.

• Inspired by this post on Decolonizing Wellness from The Slow Factory Foundation, we’ll use a “circular” structure of care to help us unlearn the individualistic “pyramid” structure popularized by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

• Inspired by Maggie Appleton’s digital garden, we’ll use 🌱 to denote newly planted ideas, 🌿 for budding thoughts, and 🌸 for musings in full bloom. For areas where there may be space for ideation, I’ll mark with a 💡.

Description: this graphic depicts an ever-flowing cycle of self-care, community care, and structural care, centered on the theme of rest.

tech x self-care

• 🌸 [Try] Build a city while you sleep. The biggest blocker I had to getting a good night’s rest was my phone. Whether it was endlessly scrolling through my Twitter timeline or going down a YouTube spiral at 12AM, it was an unhealthy cycle I was desperate to break. What finally worked for me was the Sleeptown app, which incentives you to “construct buildings” overnight for your virtual town by putting your phone away before bed. It’s the best $1.99 I’ve ever spent (thank goodness it wasn’t a subscription model).

• 🌸 [Watch] Create an evening ritual that you look forward to. You’ve probably heard by now that you should turn off all electronics at least one hour before bed and minimize blue light if you want to get good sleep. Although I knew that this was true, I had a hard time putting it into practice because I didn’t have an evening ritual that I genuinely looked forward to. After many iterations, I’ve landed on the following routine:

  • 9:45PM → Start to wind down whatever I’m working on

  • 10:00PM → Turn on Sleeptown + iOS Downtime activates (all of my apps are soft-locked)

  • 10:00-10:15PM → Shower, skincare, etc.

  • 10:15-11PM → Reading / journaling

    • I recently got a Kindle Paperwhite, which doesn’t emit blue light, and have been loving it — it’s my only exception to the no screens rule

  • 11PM → Lights Out

• 🌸 [Try] Take a digital detox. Rest doesn’t always have to be sleep. It can also mean being out in nature, or spending quality time with loved ones sans screens. As my heart hurts for those who lost loved ones this week, I am reminded of how precious life is, how grateful I am for the loving relationships in my life, and the ephemeral nature of time. To help me unplug, I love using the Forest app (also from the creators of Sleeptown) to help me stay off my phone, be present, and cultivate my relationships (and my virtual garden).

• 🌿 [Listen] Black Girl in Om on the healing power of sleep. I’m a big fan of this podcast and Lauren Ash in general, and love both the minisode and their Beauty Sleep album, which is full of soothing sleep meditations and affirmations.

tech x community care

• 🌿 [Listen] How your spirituality practice can make space for rest. I recently listened to this episode from The Happiness Lab podcast on Judaism and the vital importance of observing a day of rest. It has helped me think about spirituality as a community space grounded in rest and restoration.

  • 🌸 [Read] Rest as the foundation of Buddhist meditation. In my own Buddhist spiritual practice, we center our meditation around calming or “resting” the mind and body. Rest is the foundation of our practice, and on the days that I get to do 2-3+ hours of meditation, I feel a noticeable difference in my own relationship to and perception of time.

• 🌱 [Read] The Nap Ministry on Rest as Resistance. I am in awe of The Nap Ministry, which hosts everything from collective napping experiences to workshops and lectures to performance art installations that center Black rest. Their art embodies the notion of rest as resistance.

• 🌿 [Read] Alex Elle on Community Rest. I love this post from Alex Elle, on how rest helps us show up feeling restored, nourished, and replenished. Especially for marginalized folks still hurting from recent events, this is a powerful reminder.

Description: Picture of a sticky note that reads “dear self, action also requires rest. give yourself permission to do both. -a.e.” (source)

tech x structural care

• 🌸 [Read] Navigating the relationship between social media and social un/rest. Last summer, I came across this essay on reimagining the role of social media in supporting sustainable movements from Humphrey Obuobi, and it has stuck with me ever since. Humphrey does a fantastic job of highlighting where social media has increased visibility of social injustices and supported social unrest, while also outlining its shortcomings, leaving us with this hope:

  “Of course, tech platforms aren’t the only factors here by a longshot; the development of social movements rests on many nontechnical pillars that shape our social realities. Still, the development of technology is closely coupled with our cultural values and potential for action; the role that it plays in facilitating social engagement will always be important, and its importance is only likely to grow in the coming years. My hope is that as we continue to build social platforms, we build thoughtfully, with a sensibility towards the community-based systems and values that drive social progress.”

• 🌱 [Read] Making time to rest in the age of technocapitalism. We’ll get into this more in the coming weeks, but one of the issues at the core of this tension between rest and capitalism is time — the time we take to rest is time that we are not working to uphold capitalist structures. When we take time to rest, we often feel guilty for not being “productive”, and wrestle with our own internalized capitalism. By the time we are ready to embrace rest, it is time to work again.

  • 💡 [Read/Watch] Turning to timebanking. A few years ago, I actually met Edgar Cahn ‘56, who coined the term “timebanking” and is a former Swattie(!). I’ve recently begun looking into this as an alternative model for understanding our relationships to time/value/labor, and am curious if technology could/should scale something like timebanking to make it more widely practiced. If you have ideas, hit reply and let me know!

  • 🌿 [Read] Recognizing Internalized Capitalism. A friend recently shared this post with me that was super clarifying:

  

  Description: Graphic that shows what internalized capitalism looks like, i.e. feeling guilty for resting, placing productivity before health, etc. (source)

✨ Coming Soon

Thanks for joining us today for the second issue of Tech Care. In the coming weeks, I hope to chat about other themes in the “Conversations of Care” section, while also adding new sections like:

• 🎁 Care.pkg → a community care package, inspired by the concept of the Gift Economy.

  • I’d love to use this space to support and amplify what you’re working on and/or thinking about along the lines of tech x care, share any tips/resources you have, and more.

• 👩🏻‍💻 Tech Care, Tech Action → a place for us to center mutual aid

  • I’ll likely start a running thread of mutual aid networks that I’ll update every week and share here, and invite you to add any you’re involved in as well! If you missed it, you can check out last week’s issue on the importance of mutual aid to learn more.

• And more — if you have any ideas of what else you want to see/learn about, let me know!

💌 Take care,

Michelle

P.S. hey! I’m so grateful for you. Feel free to reply to this email if anything resonates or if you have any questions for me, or DM me on Twitter. Always here for a conversation of care :)