The e-ink newspaper trend isn’t just millennial nostalgia. It’s a hard boundary. Those screens don’t refresh. They don’t ping. They just sit there, waiting for you to turn the page. That slowness forces my brain to actually load a thought from start to finish, which is apparently a luxury we’ve forgotten how to afford.

Infinite scroll isn’t a neutral feature. It’s built on B.F. Skinner’s variable ratio reinforcement. You pull, you get a hit, you don’t know when the next one’s coming. It’s basically the Tower card in algorithmic form—sudden shocks, fractured focus, and the quiet realization that you’ve been pacing the same mental cage for an hour. I’m not religious, but as a queer writer, I’ve always treated ritual like a creative practice. I need structure. I need friction. And lately, I’ve been testing a strict digital sabbath where I leave the phone in the bedroom and only touch paper or e-ink for the first three hours of the day.

From a cognitive angle, I think this directly counters what Herbert Simon warned about decades ago: a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. You literally can’t hoard both. When I’m working with tarot or mapping out a ritual cycle, I need that attention poverty reversed. I need Temperance energy—deliberate pacing, mixing two cups without spilling. When I’m fragmented, my readings turn into paranoid overanalysis. When I’m grounded, the symbols actually talk back instead of just reflecting my own anxiety.

I’m not saying ditch your phone forever. I’m just saying treat your focus like a finite currency. Start small. One hour of actual stillness. See if your nervous system stops vibrating like a plucked cello string. What’s your experience with carving out tech-free space for practice? Does it feel like a relief, or does the silence just make you itch?