Pebbling
On escaping the matrix, Instagram, and the difference between connection and hiding.
I escaped the matrix.
No, really.
I recently completed an in person active meditation retreat where they confiscated my phone for an entire week. It was a much more holistic retreat than that makes it sound, but this post is about my phone.
It’s not lost on me that I have an addiction to that little device I carry everywhere, opening it without even knowing why, reaching for it before I’ve consciously decided to do anything at all. I opened a journal entry from last year and found myself writing about the exact same thing. Some patterns are stubborn.
Each year I choose a word of the year and this year I landed on intention… but the one place I’ve struggled to maintain any semblance of intention? That dang phone.
The program I’ve been doing invited me to look honestly at the ways I distract and numb myself. There are a few. But the biggest offender is definitely the phone.
Returning to the world with my phone in hand, I noticed something immediately: everything felt different.
A baby in a stroller waved at me - not at everyone passing by, but specifically, deliberately, at me. I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen in years on the street who just happened to be in the city for the day. I noticed people interacting with each other with patience and care. I caught a woman fixing her outfit while she waited for her bus and then spotted the same woman two hours later on the other side of the city. None of this is remarkable on paper, and yet it all felt incredibly more vivid than usual.
I’ve always been someone who notices the beauty in ordinary moments and reaches out to connect with people. But there is a new level of awareness available to me that I was unable to access before… and it’s hard not to notice what had been blocking it.
These apps are designed to keep us reaching for them. The dopamine hits are engineered with little heart rewards, the infinite scroll, the little red notification dot. Silicon Valley has spent billions of dollars perfecting the exact reflex I am trying to break. The pull is real and intentional. It sometimes seems like the only solution is to delete them all and walk away.
And yet, I’m not ready to walk away. I want to return to my phone with more consciousness about how and why I use it - starting with the app I love most and trust least: Instagram.
Honestly, I love instagram. I find out about events I actually want to attend. I discover so much music, both from friends and from surprisingly well-targeted ads. I learn about AI. I get inspired by what other people are making and thinking. I stay connected to friends scattered across the world.
And my favorite thing about it? Something called pebbling.
The term comes from Gentoo penguins, which present rocks to their mates as tokens of love and to help build their nests. In human terms, pebbling is the act of sharing a small, thoughtful meme, article, or link with someone to express affection and strengthen a bond. Seeing something that makes you think of a person and sending it their way. The little digital equivalent of saying “I thought of you today.”
That kind of small, unsolicited, and warm connection is genuinely one of my favorite things. It’s the opposite of numbing.
Which is exactly what made it so uncomfortable to watch myself do the other thing.
Because I also watched myself reach for my phone to avoid the tasks I didn’t want to do. Not to connect with anyone. Not to pebble a friend. Just to escape the mild discomfort of whatever was sitting in front of me.
That’s not connection. That’s hiding.
And that’s the distinction I’m trying to hold onto: the phone as a bridge versus the phone as a trap door. One takes you toward something. The other just takes you out of the moment you’re in.
I don’t want to delete Instagram. I just want to know why I’m picking it up.
That’s the intention I’m after.
Love how you brought it back to intention :)