The remote is still in my hand, a useless plastic bone. My thumb is hovering over the button, but the decision was made for me about 41 minutes ago. On the screen, a question glows in the dark room: ‘Are you still watching?’ Of course I am. Where else would I be? The question feels less like a technical query and more like a gentle accusation. My neck has a permanent crick, my eyes feel like they’ve been scrubbed with sand, and the plot of the last three episodes has blended into a single, generic slurry of handsome spies and urban backdrops. This was supposed to be relaxation. This was the reward for a long day of fighting with systems that don’t make sense, culminating in me being locked out of an account for typing my own password incorrectly just one too many times. So why do I feel like I’ve just finished a shift at a factory that manufactures emptiness?

Numbing vs. Grounding: A Crucial Distinction

We use the same word for two entirely different states of being. We say we’re ‘relaxing’ when we’re binge-watching a show, and we say we’re ‘relaxing’ when we’re tending to a garden. But one is an act of surrender, and the other is an act of engagement. One involves passively receiving a tsunami of engineered stimuli, the other involves actively shaping a small corner of the world. They are not the same. Calling them both ‘relaxation’ is like calling a sugar-coma and a nourishing meal the same thing just because they both stop you from feeling hungry for a little while.

Simon’s Secret: Reclaiming “Reset”

I’m going to make a confession that feels strange to admit: I used to think people with intense, hands-on hobbies were just bad at relaxing. I have a friend, Simon N.S., who works as a chimney inspector. It’s a dirty, physically demanding job that requires an almost supernatural level of attention to detail. One mistake, one missed crack in a flue liner, can have serious consequences. When he gets home, covered in soot and weary to his bones, he doesn’t collapse onto the couch. He unrolls a massive sheet of paper, gets out a set of rulers and tools, and spends hours drawing fictional city maps. Intricate, impossibly detailed maps of places that don’t exist. Streets, buildings, parks, transit systems-all from his imagination. For years, I thought this was insane. ‘Simon,’ I’d say, ‘your brain has to be fried. Just watch a movie.’ He’d just smile and say, ‘This is how I reset.’

The Attention Economy’s Grip

I didn’t get it. It sounded like more work. But I was looking at it through the lens of a brain marinated in the logic of the attention economy, an economy that has spent billions of dollars to convince us that the path of least resistance is the path to happiness. Every algorithm is designed to shave off a microsecond of thought, to serve you the next piece of content before you even have to ask. It’s a brilliant system for keeping you glued, but it’s a terrible one for your soul. It’s a constant state of low-grade consumption that numbs the part of you that wants to do, to make, to create.

The Exhale: From Numbing to Grounding

Numbing feels good for a minute. It’s a temporary anesthetic for the chaos of modern life. It’s the digital equivalent of holding your breath. But you can’t hold your breath forever. Eventually, you have to exhale. Grounding, on the other hand, is the exhale. It’s the act of reconnecting your brain to your hands. It’s the focused, quiet work of bringing something into existence that wasn’t there before. For Simon, it’s the fine, steady line of a newly inked boulevard. His desk is a testament to this focus. There isn’t a screen in sight, just paper, straight edges, and a collection of about 31 pens. He’s particularly fond of a set of Japanese erasable pens because they give him the freedom to lay down a bold, permanent-looking line with the safety net of being able to correct it. It’s a perfect tool for his world-building-it allows for both confident strokes and the reality of human error.

Feedback Loops: Dopamine vs. Serotonin

There’s a crucial difference in the feedback loop. The feedback loop of a streaming show is a cliffhanger that pushes you to the next episode. The feedback loop of Simon’s map is the small, quiet satisfaction of a perfectly drawn intersection. It’s a private victory. It produces no likes, no shares, no comments. Its only metric of success is the feeling it gives him. This is the part I was missing. I was chasing the big, loud, easy dopamine of passive entertainment, while he was cultivating the slow, steady serotonin of active creation. One burns out, the other builds up. The former leaves you feeling drained, like you’ve been running on a neurological treadmill. The latter leaves you feeling centered, like you’ve put a deep anchor into the earth.

I think we’ve been subtly tricked into believing that any effort is ‘work’ and therefore the opposite of ‘leisure.’ Making a cup of pour-over coffee is ‘work,’ so we use a pod machine. Tending a small herb garden is ‘work,’ so we buy the plastic-packaged version. The friction of effort has become the enemy. This reminds me of my password fiasco. The system was designed to be ‘secure’ and ‘seamless,’ but a tiny bit of human friction-a typo, a memory lapse-caused the entire thing to lock me out with a cold, impersonal message. I was powerless. That feeling of powerlessness is what sends us scrambling for the comfort of the couch, for the numbing agent of a 10-hour binge. We want to escape the feeling of not being in control.

It’s about finding a small, low-stakes arena where you are the master. Your domain can be a sourdough starter, a block of wood you’re carving, a page you’re filling with words, or a fictional city you’re mapping. In that space, you make the rules. There are no pop-up ads, no notifications, no algorithmic recommendations. There is only the task at hand and the dialogue between your mind and your materials. It requires a little bit of activation energy to start-and I admit, sometimes that initial push feels impossible. I once bought 121 dollars worth of watercolor supplies, convinced I would become a painter. For the first month, they sat there, judging me. The sheer potential was intimidating. It felt easier to just watch another show. The mistake I made was thinking I had to create a masterpiece. That’s the lie. You don’t have to be good at it. The goal isn’t the product; it’s the process.

Brain Chemistry: Accomplishment vs. Addiction

The brain actually changes when engaged in these tasks. When you’re doing something with your hands, you’re activating the ‘effort-driven rewards circuit.’ It’s a robust system that connects action to satisfaction. When you successfully knit a row, or sand a piece of wood smooth, or draw a clean line, your brain releases dopamine, but it’s a different flavor of dopamine. It’s the kind that’s tied to accomplishment and learning, which builds self-efficacy and resilience. It’s the opposite of the hollow hit you get from another auto-playing episode, which is more akin to the brain chemistry of addiction.

Making Space for Grounding

I’m not saying you should cancel your streaming subscriptions and spend all your free time building ship-in-a-bottle replicas. I still watch shows. But the great con is that we’ve forgotten there’s an alternative. We reach for the remote because it’s the closest, easiest tool. It’s become a reflex. The idea here isn’t to replace numbing entirely, but to recognize it for what it is and to intentionally, deliberately, make space for grounding. Maybe it’s just 21 minutes a day. Maybe it’s one afternoon a week. It’s the conscious choice to stop consuming and start creating, even on the most microscopic scale. I even tried Simon’s mapping thing. My city looked like a 1st grader drew it. The lines were wobbly, the scale was all wrong, and I named a street ‘Bob Street.’ It was an absolute mess. And for the first time in a long time, after staring at screens all day, my head felt quiet. It felt clear.