Escape From Modernity

Escape From Modernity

I didn't mean to disappear.

Not in the dramatic sense, at least. I didn't pack a bag and vanish in the middle of the night. There was no goodbye letter on the kitchen table, no cryptic voicemail left unanswered. No one would write a Netflix docuseries about it.

But one morning, I simply didn’t open my laptop.

No endless stream of emails. No blinking Slack messages. No video meetings in which no one looked each other in the eye. My phone lay face down on the table, silent for the first time in years. Notifications came and went, stacking up like unpaid bills, and I let them.

Instead, I walked.

It began as a need to stretch my legs, just a momentary escape from the glowing screens and artificial air. But as I stepped outside, I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I felt sunlight on my face without a layer of glass between us. The morning was still cool, the air not yet thick with city fumes or deadlines. It smelled like dew and possibility.

I kept walking.

Down past the coffee shop where people typed on laptops while ignoring each other. Past the bus stop, the honking cars, the man talking angrily into a headset. My feet led me to a dirt path I didn’t remember noticing before. Maybe it had always been there, or maybe it only appears when you're ready to see it.

I followed it.

The city began to recede behind me like a bad memory. The trees thickened. My cell signal died, and with it, the anxiety of being reachable. I didn’t mourn its passing.

Hours passed, or maybe just moments—I stopped measuring time. The forest around me seemed to breathe, to whisper. The air buzzed not with texts or pings but with cicadas and birdsong. I sat beneath a tree older than anything I could comprehend and felt small in a way that was comforting.

For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t anyone’s employee, consumer, or user. I simply was.

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That night, I lit a fire the old way—awkwardly, imperfectly, with sticks and sweat. There’s a kind of honesty in struggle that I had forgotten. Not the curated kind of effort posted on LinkedIn or disguised as “hustle,” but the real thing—blisters, dirt under the nails, smoke in the eyes.

And as the fire crackled, I stared at the stars.

Do you know how bright they are without streetlights? How loud silence becomes without podcasts and playlists to fill it? There’s a pulse to it, a rhythm that modernity drowned out long ago.

I started thinking in full sentences again. Not in hashtags. Not in headline-speak. Just quiet thoughts with no audience.

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The days melted together.

I didn’t miss the world, not at first. I didn’t miss the curated feeds, the digital dopamine, the endless scroll of outrage and comparison. But eventually, I did begin to wonder—not about the news or the algorithms—but about the people. The ones who might still remember me. Who might worry, or maybe not.

I carved a message into a flat stone and left it at the edge of the trail:

“I am not lost. I have simply chosen to be found elsewhere.”

It felt true.

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One morning, I returned.

Not because I had to, but because I wanted to. To see if the world had changed, or if maybe I had.

I stepped back into the city like someone stepping out of a dream. The air felt heavier, the lights too bright. Notifications flooded back like a returning tide. I turned most of them off.

I walk more now. I pause more. I answer slower. I do not confuse urgency with importance anymore.

Sometimes, when the noise gets too loud, I return to the path.

It’s always there.

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Author’s Note:

If you’ve ever felt the pressure to always be “on,” to constantly produce, respond, consume—this story is for you. May you find your own path, even if it’s just a walk around the block with your phone left behind.