Dear Internet,

I just returned home to New York from Florida where I had gone for my step-dad’s memorial which turned out to be a very emotionally charged weekend with my family and the community of St. Pete.

Tonight, blessed with a second day of paid bereavement off of work, I deleted the Instagram app off my phone and deactivated my Facebook account. Despite that, three times I found myself 100% mindlessly, with no conscious thought, going to Facebook and finding myself logged out, a blissful reminder of my free will.

I was curious about Instagram, and after a few hours, logged into Instagram on my desktop. Not to scroll, but to see if I had any notifications or message. Then I clicked out of the tab. I’m not a cold-turkey purist; I’ll ween myself off without sweating unfulfilled curiosity. No point in suffering if I can ween. If you can lean, you can ween.

The point is to develop a greater quality of attention in my present life and disengage myself from the tentacles of my phone’s pull. I admire people like those high schoolers in NYC who formed the Luddite Club and got flip phones instead and meet in the wooded parks to partake in song, writing and drawing. So ’90s (and all of time previous for billions of years).

Anyway, I don’t even care if I survive as an artist off of social media; I’m already feeling more alive.

All the best, Eva

p.s. Addressing the audience as “Internet” comes from my favorite artist youtuber Hennessy Youngman, whose show I got to be a part of in Chelsea, NYC at a gallery called Family Business. I brought him a rose just like he asked, and my piece was Obama on shiny black vinyl with a lightbulb over his head.