Read More. Scroll Less. Get Bored. On Purpose.
Intentionally Unplugging
The sunrise was slow again this morning.
It hovered just above the trees like it wasn’t quite ready to commit; painting the edges of the sky in soft gold, like a whisper instead of a shout. I stood there on the back deck, coffee cooling in my hand, and listened to the quiet. Not silence exactly. Just the kind of quiet that feels rare these days. The hum of birds. The occasional bark of a neighbor’s dog. No notifications. No noise.
How quickly those moments can fade away.
Good morning. I’m JJ Johnson, and this is Unplugged—a weekly newsletter for friends, family, fans, and anyone trying to slow down in a world that seems allergic to stillness.
My oldest son just finished sixth grade.
I watched him as he walked home down the sidewalk on that last day of school, his backpack slung low, taller than he was just months ago, his hair flopping into his eyes the way it always does when it needs a trim. He didn’t see it, but I stared for a second too long.
Because it hit me: I only have seven summers left. Seven. Seven until he heads off to college and starts life.
Seven bike rides down the hill. Seven backyard s’more nights. Seven chances to talk while tossing a baseball or sitting on the edge of the pool. And if I’m being honest, I already lost a couple. From 2021 to 2023, anxiety, depression, they ran the show. I was there, yes—but in the way a shadow was there. Present, but not really present.
By the time I finally started to wake up, I realized I’d missed more than I cared to admit.
This week I decided something had to change. Not a dramatic, cold-turkey kind of thing. Not a soapbox moment. Just a quiet course correction. One I could live out day by day. But also challenge my kids to live out.
I’m scaling back.
I’m not vanishing from the internet, and I’m not going off-grid. But I am being more intentional with where I put my attention. From now on, I’ll stay active on Instagram and Substack—spaces that feel creative, focused, and connected. I’ll still post updates on Facebook through Meta Business, but I won’t be hanging out there. I’m done chasing reach or relevance.
This isn’t something I decided on a whim either. Truth is I’ve already been scaling back. Posting less and less in many places. Finally I deleted many of those apps. I set a goal in January that by the end of May I could make this transition.
Instead, I’m chasing something else entirely.
Books.
Stillness.
Laughter that lives outside the algorithm.
Evenings on the back deck watching my kids hunt adventures, not pixels.
I want to read more.
I want to grow bored more.
Because I believe boredom is the garden where creativity grows.
It’s in the silence—real, uninterrupted silence—that our imagination kicks in. That’s where the best stories live. It’s where we remember who we are when no one’s watching, and nothing’s performing.
I want that for me. And I want it for my kids.
I’m not tossing the iPads. I’m not making grand declarations about screen time. We’re not Luddites with a grudge. But we are going to let the boredom breathe a bit this summer.
No agendas. No pressure to always be productive.
Just time. Just space. Just presence.
Our kids were growing consumed with the screens. Sitting in their rooms, watching YouTube, playing RoBlocks and Minecraft online with their friends. Sometimes for an entire Saturday. We grew content to let them do so. All of us were irritable and moody all the time.
I think tech has a way of doing that.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what I’ve missed. Not only the wasted evenings, but real things: evenings on the deck, laughter, conversations with my kids that didn’t have a phone buzzing in the background. Bradbury wrote, “We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while.” That line hits differently now. I am bothered, by how much time I’ve given away to platforms that thrive on noise and outrage. I don’t want to live distracted. I want to live awake.
The truth is, social media addiction hasn’t made me more connected. It’s made me more distracted, more anxious, more fractured. Sorry for a second Bradbury quote but why not. He said, “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” That’s the world we’re living in currently, a world trying to seduce us into silence, not with censorship, but with scroll fatigue.
That’s why I want to read more. I want to read not because they’re part of a launch team or trending on BookTok, but because they spark something inside me. The kind of books that remind me why I started writing in the first place. Books that invite wonder. That settle the mind. That stir the heart.
This summer is about turning the volume down on the world and turning the pages of something better.
So if you see fewer updates on Instagram or longer pauses between replies, it’s not because I’ve disappeared. It’s because I’m choosing something better than constant connection.
I’m choosing to be here. Really here.
I’ll post here in my weekly substack, and occasionally on Instagram primarily thru my stories.
Because seven summers will go fast.
And I don’t want to miss this one.
Below are the Top Five Books I Plan to Read This Summer
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
The first in an epic trilogy about the colonization and terraforming of Mars—dense, brilliant, and big-picture sci-fi at its finest.Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
The story deepens as political tensions rise and Mars begins to transform, both literally and ideologically.Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
The conclusion of the trilogy, tackling what it means to build a lasting civilization on a new world.The Long Walk by Stephen King (as Richard Bachman)
A haunting dystopian novel about a brutal contest where teenage boys must keep walking—or die; reading this before the movie adaptation hits.Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
My all-time favorite novel—every year on my birthday, I reread it as a reminder of why stories matter.
Hope to Get To (Bonus Reads):
Dark Force Rising by Timothy Zahn
Book two of the legendary Thrawn Trilogy—smart, character-driven Star Wars at its best.The Last Command by Timothy Zahn
The trilogy finale, where Thrawn’s tactical genius is tested to the limit.The Truce at Bakura by Kathy Tyers
Set immediately after Return of the Jedi, this one explores what happens when a new alien threat forces the Rebels and Empire to (temporarily) unite.
I'm in the same place. I removed social media and game apps from my phone yesterday. I've been at Substack for about a week now, and I love here. I need the quiet. I need my brain to have room to not think or process new information for a while.