In 2016, I sat in a conference room at what was then CVC in San Diego listening to my friend and colleague Eric Garcia talk about something called “unplugging.” At the time, I was live covering the conference on social media. Tweeting sessions. Posting photos. Responding to notifications. Tracking engagement. Watching my phone like it contained the secrets of the universe instead of mostly veterinary conference hashtags and dopamine. And during Eric’s session, something almost embarrassing happened.

I realized I physically could not stop touching my phone. Not metaphorically. Literally.

I remember sweating. Fidgeting. Reaching for it reflexively every few seconds. At one point, I realized I was barely listening because I was so consumed with documenting the experience instead of actually experiencing it. Which, honestly, is probably the most painfully accurate origin story possible for my relationship with unplugging.

Eric wasn’t talking about hating technology. He wasn’t arguing that social media was evil. He wasn’t demanding people disappear into the woods and churn butter by candlelight. He was talking about intentionality. About presence. About what happens when our brains forget how to exist without stimulation every seven seconds. And apparently my nervous system took that as a direct threat.

The wild thing is that session stayed with me. For years.

Not because I immediately transformed into some beautifully balanced digital minimalist. I absolutely did not. If anything, my life became more connected after that. More leadership. More advocacy. More visibility. More messages. More urgency. More people needing pieces of me at all hours of the day. But somewhere along the way, I started understanding some of what Eric was actually trying to teach us.

Unplugging is not really about the phone. For me, it’s about reclaiming my ability to hear myself think. It’s about recognizing when your nervous system has forgotten what stillness feels like. It’s about noticing when your worth has become tangled up in responsiveness, productivity, visibility, or being perpetually available to everyone around you. It doesn’t require you to look far to see our world has developed a particular talent for glorifying overconnection.

We praise exhaustion. We reward hyperavailability. We normalize answering messages at midnight. We build entire cultures around urgency and then wonder why nobody can rest. And technology quietly pours gasoline on all of it. Slack. Teams. Text messages. Email. Social media. Group chats. Notifications. Calendar alerts. “Quick questions.” The infinite digital slot machine of modern leadership. Somewhere along the way, many of us stopped having any real separation between ourselves and our work.

So over the years, I started experimenting. Tiny things at first. Leaving my phone in another room. Driving without podcasts. Walking without headphones. Turning notifications off. Letting texts wait.
Sitting outside without simultaneously consuming three forms of content while answering emails. And I learned something uncomfortable: Silence is loud when you haven’t visited it in a while.

At first, unplugging felt itchy. Then boring. Then anxiety-producing. And eventually? Necessary. Now, unplugging has become less of a rigid practice and more of a relationship I continually renegotiate with myself. Sometimes I do it well. Sometimes I absolutely do not. Sometimes I still catch myself reaching for my phone because my brain cannot tolerate twelve uninterrupted seconds of existing. But now I notice it. And honestly, that awareness alone changed me.

This page isn’t about perfection. It’s not anti-technology. It’s not about pretending modern life doesn’t require connection. It’s about creating space to be human again. To think. To rest. To feel boredom. To reconnect with creativity. To let your nervous system unclench for five freaking minutes. Eric planted that seed for me in a conference room in San Diego nearly a decade ago. I just needed years to actually hear it…