Hello from JOMO-ville 👋🏻
How to experience the joy of missing out
Today is one of those days I dreamed about for years. And it is a completely ordinary day in my new life.
I'm writing this from my backyard with the sun warming my skin and the sounds of robins chirping in the trees around me. The air has a new sweetness from the natural world in bloom––and from the promise of future blooms from the marigolds, nasturtiums, and a dozen other plants I sowed at the start of the month.
I'm finishing up this newsletter draft and starting to think how I'll spend the rest of the day. I might go for a walk around a nearby pond before sunset. Probably I’ll watch a few Jeopardy reruns after dinner while cross-stitching, like the wannabe retiree I apparently am.
On this particular day, I have no plans with friends, no events to attend, no meetings scheduled. There have been many days like this one since I moved from New York City to this small town in Western Massachusetts last fall.
While I dreamt of this solitude for many years, I also sometimes worried about it. Long after the shine had worn off of NYC, there remained an anchor tethered around my foot, keeping me in the city even as I tried to float away. And that anchor was the fear of missing out.
Fear of missing out on opportunities and cool events. Fear of missing my friends, the first ones I’d made as an adult and now so long in my life they were more like family. Fear, perhaps, of missing out on who I was in the city and who I would become if I stayed.
But since I moved, I have very rarely felt a hint of FOMO. Instead, I have been basking in the joy of missing out.
“FOMO’s chill distant cousin”
JOMO first appeared on Urban Dictionary in a 2013 entry defined as, “…an antonym to FOMO, that means that you prefer being unavailable and deliberately risking to miss a party that could be the greatest of all time, because (to be honest) you really don't care and [would] rather stay home and watch that new Sandra Bullock movie.”
The next year, JOMO was the title theme of a book by digital media professional Christina Crook. The term stayed relatively underground until a bump in popularity around 2018 and another one in 2024. These days, it’s an anti-distraction app, a pretty good song, several other books, and a trademarked movement with online courses and an in-person training program for educators (also by Crook).
The Cleveland Clinic tells us to “think of JOMO as FOMO’s chill distant cousin.” JOMO, according to them, is about focusing on what makes you happy, without worrying about the actions or judgment of others.
JOMO and FOMO are just new words for age-old phenomena. As Richard Sima writes in The Washington Post, “Humans have dealt with [FOMO] since we realized that there were opportunities being missed, fun not being had and Joneses needing to be kept up with.” But, he adds, “the rise of social media meant that FOMO arose in public consciousness and vocabulary.” In addition to spreading the term around, social media itself has cranked up our feelings of FOMO as we scroll through perfectly poised highlight reels from our friends and influencers.
Sima points to a 2020 paper in the journal Psychological Reports that showed correlations between higher levels of FOMO and lower levels of life satisfaction and self-esteem, and higher levels of loneliness. The paper also noted that previous studies have shown how FOMO is primarily found in those fearing social exclusion and feeling a lack belonging. But, the authors note, excessive use of social media, which many turn to when they’re experiencing FOMO, can distract those same people from having social experiences out in the analog world, “leading to a vicious circle.”
I didn’t really want to live there, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave
I have often felt pulled by the centrifugal force of that vicious circle as I scroll through social media feeds or reflexively open Instagram when I have absolutely nothing I want to see there. And I felt that same pull when I lived in New York City. I didn’t really want to live there, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave.
Much like the social internet, New York City presents you with an infinite buffet of life experiences you could be having. On any given night, there are countless events you could attend even just within your own niche and budget, let alone the larger array glinting beyond those. Add to that the professional networking events you could be taking advantage of; the revolving door of friends and relatives visiting from out of town (who never quite seem to understand that their once-in-a-lifetime trip to NYC is just another full work day for you); and the long list of friends you’ve been meaning to grab a coffee with for months, or years, because yes, inter-borough friendships might as well be long distance and everyone else is just as busy as you are––and it’s no wonder that to live in NYC is to live with a constant feeling of FOMO.
Moving to a small town has felt like logging off
Moving to a small town has felt like logging off. I could scour newsletters with event listings and maybe come up with one thing of interest to do every night of the week in the larger Pioneer Valley region, but I am freed from the fear of missing out on dozens of tempting opportunities on any given night. It’s not that there aren’t plenty of cool places to explore and things to do here — or that I haven’t made friends or joined new communities. I’ve done all of the above. The difference is the scale.
For example, last month I went to a punk show my friend was playing in (my mailman was also playing in the show, which felt like a very small town kind of coincidence). The assembled audience and the bands themselves were visually, vocally, and beautifully queer. If I didn’t look out the front windows at the surrounding mountains, I could’ve been at a punk show in Brooklyn. This shouldn’t be a shock. This region is super queer (according to the 2024 US census, two out of the three counties in the Pioneer Valley were ranked #1 and #4 for most female-female households in the U.S.). But for a former Texan who used to hear “small town” and picture a one stoplight town with nothing more than a Southern Baptist church and a Dairy Queen (both of which would be plastered in Trump signs these days), it remains endlessly refreshing to see these small towns populated by such large portions of queer and trans folks.
Since moving, I’ve also been to trans community fairs, queer art markets, LGBT lectures and film screenings, queer hikes, and countless bars where the entire staff was gay. I’ve watched my new (predominantly queer and trans) friends help organize fundraisers for trans families fleeing red states, queer proms, kids’ art classes, protests against almost everything the current administration has been attempting, and individual Pride parades for just about every town in the valley. I am in no way missing out on queer arts and culture.
And yet, the smaller scale of it feels so much more doable. I am relatively able to keep a finger on the pulse of most of the events happening around here and rarely feel like I have to choose one over the other. Maybe they aren’t always exactly within my niche interests, but with fewer options, I avoid the paralyzing paradox of choice and push myself into a wider world of experiences. I even run into some of the same people at each event, which gives me a chance to grow and deepen real relationships––whereas, in NYC, I often felt like I could meet someone once and never see them again.
The scale of the social internet is one of its downfalls
I acknowledge that this smaller scale may not be to everyone’s tastes, but it does make me think about my longstanding belief that the scale of the social internet is one of its downfalls. There’s the aforementioned paradox of choice — you spend an hour trying to decide what to watch instead of watching something, you spend an hour looking at different activities you could go to instead of going to do one — but there’s also issues like harassment and conspiracy theories, both of which existed pre-internet, but which spread like wildfire in our era of social media. If the internet turned off one day, I think we’d all be fine missing out on super-charged harassment and conspiracy theories, but saying goodbye to our infinite buffet of choices would be a lot harder.
Leaving the buffet of New York City was hard as well, but it was something I eventually realized I had to do. Among other factors, I am very much a person who does not like to be perceived unless I’m opting into it. Posting content online? That’s okay because I not only opted in, I usually produced it and was in full control of every aspect of it. Going out in public? Also good because I more or less choose to do that and can prepare myself for needing to be “on” when I do. But living in a city as dense as New York means existing in public far more than in other places. Your neighbors can hear your every movement. Your commute is shoulder-to-shoulder with countless strangers. Even the fact that crying in public is considered a rite of passage tells you how little privacy there is in the city.
Beyond that, I am a person whose stress levels spike from external stimuli. By noises, by unexpected occurrences, and most of all by people. Which becomes exhausting when you live in a building that shares walls with multiple other households and where people pass by your window in a near constant stream––talking on their phones, shouting at one another, blasting music. The analog equivalent of pop-up and autoplay ads on a news article you’re trying to read.
I also people please out of fear of conflict. I try to predict other people's emotions and anticipate situations that may arise. I’m conscientious in the absolute worst way. In New York, I would refuse to do things like play my TV too loudly or shower too late at night because I was scared that someone would confront me over their annoyance at my noise levels in the same way I wished I had the courage to do about theirs. As the years went on, I denied myself more and more basic comforts out of the fear of being overheard, judged, or berated by neighbors or passersby.
"They have therapists in Massachusetts"
I recognize that this not a healthy way to interact with the world, but I also recognize that it's a core part of who I am and who I have always been. Changing my environment to substantially minimize distracting external factors was a major way for me to manage that part of who I am. Another method would be therapy, sure. Though, as my friend Mike said to me when I previously shared this theory with him, saying "instead of therapy, I'm moving to Massachusetts," Mike responded, "they have therapists in Massachusetts." Smart guy, Mike.
I guess my point is that I know I have things to work on, but I also think it will be easier to work on them from an environment that is better suited to the reality of my current mental health state. If you break your leg, it's not going to help you heal if you insist on climbing the stairs at work everyday instead of using the elevator. When there is an option that exists to help you heal, you should take it. And then maybe one day, you’ll be better equipped to take the stairs again. Or maybe not. Or maybe you’ll know you can and you’ll choose not to. And all of those are okay.
And I gotta say, eight months in, the bones are healing.
I’m riding high on the JOMO lifestyle out here in small town Western Mass (and with a coincidentally-timed decrease in my social media consumption).
Whatever the flavor of it may be for you, if you’re interested in trying out a little of this JOMO lifestyle, here’s some advice:
#1 Accept that you can’t do everything
Philosopher Mortimer J. Adler wrote in his bestselling How to Read a Book, “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”
I have this quote pasted at the top of my Notion library database (which is basically my own personal version of GoodReads that I’ve built over the years in an attempt to divest from Daddy Bezos). Because so much of book-tracking is just a tally of how many books you’ve read, I keep that quote at the top to remind myself that those numbers are not really what it’s about. It’s about the meaning we get from reading. And sometimes, to let that meaning sink in, you have to slow down. You might end up reading fewer books. Your TBR list and growing stack of shiny new titles might go untouched.
It is a fool’s errand to try to know or do everything. You may spend so much time collecting tidbits of information or collecting life experiences, that you never have the time to really soak up and reflect on what you’ve learned or done. Better in my opinion to take the time to truly enjoy or find meaning in fewer things. Go deep, not broad.
A significant road block to this, however, is the guilt you may feel at saying no––whether that is guilt at not attending a friend’s event or the guilt of not reading a book you’ve been telling yourself you’re going to read for a decade. Part of accepting that you can’t do everything is releasing yourself from that guilt.
Several years ago, I was asking a mentor to help me decide which projects to prioritize. As I circled around the possibility of cutting one from my slate, he made me promise, that if I chose not to move forward with it, I wouldn’t guilt trip myself over it. If I said no, I had to just let it go.
As the production team of Frozen 2 knows very well, letting it go can be extremely difficult. One thing I’ve found that helps is to assess how every part of a project or activity makes you feel. The goal here is to evaluate if this activity is worth setting aside other ones for.
For example, before I started transitioning, I began a very ambitious creative project that would mark my one year on testosterone. For various reasons, it didn’t happen so I set my sights on my five year anniversary, and then six and then seven, and now I have just passed ten years on testosterone having decided that I will probably never return to that project to complete it. Sometimes I feel deep sadness and regret over not having done it. But at the same time, the type of effort it would require to complete it is not how I would presently care to spend my time. I want the product, but not the experience of getting there.
Because I am a person who is interested in SO many things and has SO many ideas and goals, I have had to really push myself to pare down by asking which ones bring me joy at every part of the process, not just the outcome.
Now, I will note here that I am sometimes what people call a Type 2 Fun kind of person. I like pushing myself through challenging situations to a rewarding outcome, sometimes even forgetting how tough the work was while I was in it. Case in point: last week I pushed through perhaps the hardest, longest workout of my life and afterwards, I wasn’t thinking about how I could barely breathe for a good twenty minutes towards the end, but rather about cool it was that I actually did it.
If you are also a Type 2 Fun kinda person, then this advice to prioritize activities that bring you joy at every phase of the process might not work for you. In that case, consider this: what are you able to say yes to by virtue of saying no to something else?
#2 Say “no” to say “yes”
I forgot when I first heard the phrase “say ‘no’ to say ‘yes’,” but it was very instrumental in me learning how to turn down requests as a freelancer (back in the halcyon days when companies still hired trans people to speak in offices and classrooms). I’d still feel terrible saying no to certain requests, but once I’d calculated how much time I would need to devote to something and tried to slot it into my calendar alongside existing commitments or perhaps more lucrative opportunities, I was at least able to make the practical argument against it. If I said no to one request, I was able to say yes to a different one that fit my goals better––or to simply focus more deeply on my existing work.
Leaving NYC required a similar tallying of priorities. For a long time, it wasn’t worth leaving behind the opportunities NYC afforded for the peace I wanted. But at a certain point, for various reasons, the scales shifted and I decided it was time to say no to all of NYC’s perks so I could say yes to spending my afternoons in the quiet of my own backyard.
That’s just my personal example, however. You don’t need to upend your life or swear off social media entirely in order to achieve JOMO.
In fact, Chris Barry, a Washington State University psychology professor interviewed by the Washington Post, emphasized that social connection is healthy and that social media, despite its flaws, can still be a positive means for connection –– if we take time to disconnect and recharge offline. And bonus points if that disconnection was by our own choosing, not enforced by a phone ban at school or work, as studies have shown the psychological benefits of unplugging were far higher for those who made the decision themselves.
Whether it’s social media, your social life, your career, or something else that you feel burned out on while still feeling the pull of FOMO, it can help to be intentional. Consider how, when, how much, and why you’re doing something. Think about what meaning it brings to you, how you feel during and after, and how it aligns with your goals or values.
I feel a lot of guilt about not publishing more content online
In a piece for Trans Day of Visibility earlier this year, writer and educator Flint Del Sol wrote about a particular kind of JOMO and proposed this rubric:
Where does “what is expected of me” meet “what is best for me?” and “what do I actually want and need?”
It was Flint’s newsletter article that got me really thinking about JOMO again. Because not only have I moved away from the hyperactivity of NYC, but I’ve also taken a huge step back from social media — consuming it and especially creating it. The more I cut back on consuming social media, the more joy I feel. But the less I post and maintain the presence I spent years cultivating, the more I feel a certain kind of FOMO.
Specifically, I feel a lot of guilt about not publishing more content online, just as the attacks on trans people have gotten to a fever pitch. I spent so many years spreading awareness about the trans experience and advocating for my community. Now, when voices of solidarity are needed the most, I’ve gone silent.
Flint is someone who is very much plugged into the scene right now and his JOMO article explored a micro version of what I’ve been feeling over the past several years. As the Trans Day of Visibility approached this past spring, Flint found himself exhausted by the prospect of doing something productive and public for the holiday, preferring instead to stay home and rest, to make art, to enjoy nature, and to just be.
Flint wrote, “Because all parts of me are trans, not just my physical body, and not just my suffering. There is not just one single way to celebrate and honor what it means to be ‘visible.’”
After many years of working as a Professional Transgender™, being unable to tell anyone what I did for a living without outing myself, I was tired. Hosting the Cool Stuff Ride Home––a daily podcast that was never about trans issues unless I occasionally chose to bring them up––was a wonderful interlude. But my work as an individual, my ~brand~ was still tied up in trans issues, and in many ways it still is. And honestly, it probably always will be because trans stories are the ones that excite me the most to tell and, as a hopeless memoirist, anything I make will be colored by my trans identity.
BUT I’ve needed rest. I’ve needed some time to miss out on the trends, to say no to the discourse, to stay in and have a nice snack. As the anti-trans legislation mounts, I have needed to be able to hear the news and process it privately instead of thinking about what kind of content I’ll produce about it.
My hope has been that I can make content that isn’t always about being trans, or about the fight we’re all in now. That maybe I can be visible just by virtue of being a trans person who is out there living his life and working towards his goals, instead of having to be visible by only talking about trans issues.
And after all, there are people like Flint taking up the mantle. I won’t rely on him to always be The Trans Voice, dooming him to a life forever churning out content. But the good news is, I don’t have to. He is one of many in a sea of fresh (and longstanding) trans voices who are sounding the alarms, explaining the facts, and keeping people’s spirits up.
As for me? I’ll join in the calls for alarm when I can, but for now my intention is to cope with our terrifying reality by using my social media for simple pleasures and learning rather than as a scare machine. Not to mention by basking in the joy of my quieter life outside of the city.
I don’t have the privilege to miss out on the news entirely––not when everyday brings shifting information about my access to health care or ability to renew my passport––so instead I’m missing out on what I can and finding joy in that. My focus these days is on my personal goals, my new community here in Western Mass, on gardening, crafting, and working on my next book. Those are the kinds of things I’m excited to share online these days, and I’m going to try very hard not to feel guilty about that.
End Notes
Some of my recent thoughts on social media were both deepened and validated by Chris Hayes’ latest book, The Sirens’ Call.
I found some practical advice for missing out in Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport.
If you’re looking to intentionally logoff, I recommend trying out a tech sabbath. Coined as “tech shabbats” by Tiffany Shlain, my favorite writing on them comes from my friend Casper’s book, The Power of Ritual. I started doing them once a month in 2019 (though have admittedly fallen out of the habit in recent years) and can really feel the difference they make in terms of feeling calm, clear-headed, and breaking my compulsion to grab my phone.
Since I don’t really use GoodReads anymore and my personal library database on Notion will remain private, anyone who is interested in keeping up with what I’m reading can do so on my Bookshop.org storefront.1
Next month, one of the apps I have used the longest and loved the most will shut down. In a surprise to many of us, Mozilla recently announced they’re shutting down Pocket, the bookmarking service originally launched as a browser extension in 2007. Being as distraught about this as I have been, I was pleased to see Anne Helen Petersen write an obituary to the app, or more specifically, an obituary to the way we used to use the internet. Because even though I’m sad about the end of a service that houses thousands of articles I swore I would one day read and about having to change my workflow, I, like Petersen, am more sad about the loss of “the halcyon days” of RSS feeds, when we actually read articles, not just scrolled, and when companies actually wanted us to do that—to spend time on their site, reading their content, and not just clicking on their ads. Pocket was great in the 2010s when text was still king on the web and when, relative to now, it felt “gloriously finite”, but Pocket became even more useful when infinite scrolling took over and you truly needed to bookmark items of interest or risk never remembering them again. You could revisit them later in one convenient app, perhaps on a subway commute when you didn’t have enough service to scroll anyways. As Petersen put it, “Pocket allowed you to keep reading the internet even when so many other forces were conspiring against it… Being there felt like slowing down internet time.” Mozilla says they’re pulling the plug on Pocket because “the way people save and consume content on the web has evolved.” That is certainly true, and it’s a damn shame. Even those of us fighting against it have felt our attention spans contract, our habits splinter. Quoting Petersen, “Whatever site or blog you loved… was never an all-you-can-eat-buffet that left you nauseous; it was an excellent, satisfying meal. The architects of this current iteration of the internet identified our hunger, understood they could teach us to consume more. Instead of reading the internet, we see it — but understand what we see less fully... it’s hard not to see [Pocket] as one of the last remnants of a different understanding of what the internet is primarily for. When I miss the internet of the 2010s… I miss the internet that wanted to be read, not scrolled, and created tools accordingly.” All that said, Instapaper has made it super easy for Pocket users to migrate over there and it turns out they have a handy Carplay feature that reads your saves aloud, which has stepped in just in time for this new car commuter who misses the reading time he got on the subway.
Jack of All Trades
Master of none
I’m super stoked to share that a poem I wrote about my favorite thing in the universe (pumpkins) was published in the SciShow Tangents Poetry Collection! SciShow Tangents was a gameshow-style science podcast that sadly ended this past spring. For each episode, one of the hosts or guests wrote a poem related to that episode’s theme and, when the show ended, they published a collection of all of the poems. The eBook features over 200 poems written by folks like Hank Green, Ceri Riley, Sam Schultz, Stefan Chin, Alexis Nikole Nelson, Brennan Lee Mulligan, Vanessa Zoltan, Tom Scott, Dylan Marron, Lulu Miller, Sydnee McElroy, Taha Khan, Tyler Thrasher, Deboki Chakravarti, Maddie Sofia, and many more—plus illustrations by Josh Quick. You can buy the eBook here.
I don’t log on too often, but I am technically on Bluesky (@jackisnotabird.cool) for anyone else who also is and may want to follow me in case that changes.
I made a li’l video about things I learned my first winter in New England. It’s a further expression of my thoughts on slowing down my daily life, reconnecting more with learning, and finding joy in the simple and mundane. I hope to make more videos like it in the future.
Want to close out Pride with some truly stoopid merch? Sometimes I forget that I literally designed and sell writing pens that say “you can’t erase me” and three-ring binders that are simply labeled “binder.” iykyk
Remember how I said companies used to hire trans people to speak at their events? It sounds fake, but it’s true! Do you have a workplace, school, or event that you think could use a speaker on the topics of LGBTQ+ issues and history, creative writing, or digital media? Need an emcee or host for an event? Galas, pub quizzes, weddings. I’ve hosted them all! If you think I could be the right fit for your event, get in touch!
And, now that I have hit Substack’s warning that this post is too long for an email, I will finally end this newsletter.
Take care,
Jack
Links on the Bookshop.org storefront, and on any book links in this newsletter are affiliate links that will earn me a li’l kickback if you use the links to purchase a book.