Closing Reflections: Relearning Attention, Stillness, and My Place Between Nature and Technology
When I look back at my Initial Reflection, I’m almost surprised by how tightly wound by technology and distant from nature I sounded. I wrote from a place of restlessness— emotionally scattered, mentally overstimulated, and unsure how to create any real boundaries between myself and my devices. I admired nature in theory but rarely felt present enough to experience it. Technology, meanwhile, felt like something I kept negotiating with but never truly controlled. At the start of the semester, I was exhausted by the constant connection with my phone, yet I was also strangely dependent on it, almost as if constant stimulation was the only version of “normal” I knew.
Over the past few months, that internal landscape slowly shifted. Through the 30×30 challenge, the “How to Break Up with Your Phone” challenge weekly reflections, and the class readings and discussions, I began noticing patterns I had previously ignored: how often I reached for my phone without thinking, how rarely I allowed boredom or silence to exist, and how foreign actual solitude felt. It wasn’t that I learned something brand new; it was more like I finally had the time and structure to pay attention to what was already happening inside me.
Revisiting Solitude, Attention, and Self-Agency
One theme that consistently resurfaced in my writing was the quiet erosion of solitude in everyday life. Newport’s (2019) argument that we can now “banish solitude” entirely (p. 80) struck me more personally than I expected. Before this class, I filled every small pocket of empty time with something digital: waiting for a friend, walking between classes, or standing in line. It was as if I didn’t quite trust myself to simply be alone with my own thoughts.
The 24-hour digital detox made this habit impossible to ignore. Without my phone, time felt stretched, awkward, and even a little disorienting, mirroring the early discomfort I experienced during my first nature walks. Yet that same emptiness gradually revealed its usefulness. The absence of distraction forced me inward: I journaled, reflected, and realized how tightly my emotional tension was bound to constant digital stimulation. In many ways, this experience echoed what the nature challenge taught me. Both contexts showed how stillness and small moments of attention can recalibrate my inner state (Popova, 2017).
During the nature challenge, this became even clearer. Those 35 minutes outside each day felt too slow, too silent, and too unstructured. But over time, something in me began to soften. I noticed tiny sensory details I typically rushed past: the distinct calls of birds, the wind brushing my face, and the rhythm of my footsteps. My senses expanded, and with them, my capacity to sit with myself without needing stimulation also did. Environmental psychology research, especially Kaplan and Kaplan’s (1989) work on attention restoration, suddenly stopped feeling abstract. I wasn’t just reading about mental restoration; I was living it. The silence that once felt uncomfortable slowly became something I looked forward to. My attention shifted away from internal noise and toward the subtle richness of the world around me, perfectly aligning with Kaplan and Kaplan’s (1989) concept of “soft fascination,” the effortless attention nature invites when we allow ourselves to truly observe.
At the same time, I became more critical of how persuasive phone design affects memory and attention (Price, 2025). This helped me recognize how little of my digital engagement was actually intentional. Yet the class also made me realize that technology itself wasn’t the enemy. The pull toward distraction came from something internal. Patterns of avoidance, relief-seeking, and coping found an easy outlet through my phone. Understanding this pushed me to confront not only my digital habits, but also my broader relationship with myself: how I manage discomfort, how I seek escape, and how resilience begins with noticing what I tend to turn away from.
Emotion, Identity, and Becoming More Attuned
Emotionally, my writing reveals a shift from a kind of low-grade, background stress to a place that feels more grounded. I hadn’t realized how much of my ambient anxiety was tied to constant stimulation until I began deliberately stepping away from it. Regular time outside became a kind of emotional reset button that was simple, steady, and surprisingly powerful.
Certain concepts from the course stayed with me, especially those I felt not just intellectually but viscerally. Williams’s (2017) idea of “possessing vastness of extent,” an experience so expansive it stretches the mind to meet it, captured perfectly what I felt during one walk in Montpelier. That moment of awe felt almost spiritual, like something in me expanded to match the landscape before me. I also experienced what Williams (2017) describes as biophilia, our innate pull toward the natural world, and how it can recalibrate our sense of balance and belonging. I began to see how small moments of mindful awareness outdoors could ripple into my emotional state long after I returned home. As these experiences accumulated, I stopped thinking of nature as something separate from me. Instead of treating it as a place I escape to when stressed, I started to understand it as a relationship. One that I actively cultivate, and one that quietly shapes my attention, emotions, and sense of self.
My relationship with technology underwent a similar shift. Instead of engaging reflexively and out of habit, I found myself using it with more intention and awareness. I still rely on my devices daily, but I now notice the micro-moments when I can choose differently. When I can rest instead of distract myself, or pause instead of react. I realized how reflexively I used technology to avoid emotions or boredom. Yet, this emptiness became fertile ground for reflection. I journaled, rested, and noticed how my emotional tension was tightly linked to constant digital stimulation. The detox also underscored the idea of resistance as self-preservation. By removing the habitual distractions, I reclaimed agency over my attention and emotional responses. This awareness also revealed how resisting the habitual pull of my devices strengthened my ability to direct my attention. When I paused instead of scrolling, journaled instead of distracting myself, or simply observed instead of reacting, I was practicing the same kind of presence that my walks in nature had taught me.
Intentional absence from technology allowed me to experience nature more fully, and full engagement with nature strengthened my capacity to resist compulsive device use. In many ways, both technology and nature became laboratories for noticing, for attention, for choice, and for self-regulation. In both spaces, stillness was not passive; it was active. It became a practice in reflection and a reconnection with my own agency.
How My Views Shifted
Looking back across the semester, I can pinpoint three major shifts:
1. Awareness of Attention
I became more aware of how attention shapes my experience. Both nature and technology influence what I notice, how I feel, and how I act. Nature taught me how to direct attention outward and calmly, while the digital detox taught me how to direct attention inward and intentionally (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989).
2. Nature and Technology as Regulators
Consistent outdoor time changed my emotional baseline, while structured breaks from devices helped me notice compulsive behaviors and reorient my emotional responses. Nature and intentional technology use together improved my capacity for reflection and focus (Williams, 2017).
3. Solitude as Practice
Solitude, once something I feared, became something I value. Silence is not empty; it is active and generative, giving space for reflection, emotion, and connection with both myself and the world around me.
Lingering Questions and Critiques
One critique that stayed with me throughout the course is the recognition that the benefits of nature I experienced are not universally accessible. The more I learned and the more I felt nature’s restorative impact, the more aware I became of how unevenly access to safe, green, and welcoming outdoor spaces is distributed. My own experience of nature as calming and restorative rests on the assumption that such spaces are available to me, an assumption that isn’t true for everyone. In fact, it wasn’t always true for me either. A lack of access earlier in my life meant I never had the opportunity to experience nature closely or understand its impact firsthand.
This makes the conversation around nature and accessibility feel especially important. Reflecting on my own past alongside what I learned this semester made it clear that any discussion of nature’s psychological benefits must also address the structural barriers that prevent many people from experiencing those benefits at all.
Where I Am Now
Compared to my initial reflection, I am more grounded, intentional, and self-aware. I no longer see nature and technology as opposing forces. Instead, they can coexist if approached mindfully. Nature provides restoration, awe, and emotional balance, while technology, when resisted consciously, can support connection and learning without dominating attention. I learnt that noticing, observing, and being present are themselves forms of learning. Integrating these practices consciously has been the most unexpected and lasting lesson: a reclamation of both time and self, a practice of noticing, and a reminder that reflection and presence are foundational to living well in a hyperconnected world.
References
Kaplan, R., & Kaplan, S. (1989). The experience of Nature: a psychological perspective.
Newport, C. (2019). Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. Penguin.
Popova, M. (2017, March 4). Leisure, the Basis of Culture: an obscure German philosopher’s timely 1948 manifesto for reclaiming our human dignity in a culture of workaholism. The Marginalian. https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/08/10/leisure-the-basis-of-culture-josef-pieper/
Price, C. (2025). How to Break Up with Your Phone, Revised Edition: The 30-Day Digital Detox Plan. Random House.
Williams, F. (2017). The Nature Fix: Why Nature makes us happier, healthier, and more creative. https://hsrc.himmelfarb.gwu.edu/books/250/