I need my cottage.

I think about my cottage a lot.

Not like a Santa Barbara-style "cottagecore" backyard studio with exposed beams and lemon trees.

No—my cottage is deep in the valley floor of what I’ve decided is probably Switzerland. Or maybe Austria. Or just a very green, very quiet place that lives in my head rent-free with a goat or a cow. 

There are mountains that curve around me.

There’s a garden in bloom out the back wooden door. 

Herbs hang unevenly from the ceiling, and the farmhouse sink is chipped. 

The fire is always warm. 

There are books—so many books. I could stack them into a new religion.

No Wi-Fi.

Just a record player. 

I’m alone. But not lonely—at least, not always.

I bake. I walk. I journal. I garden. I listen to the voices of people long dead, pressed into vinyl.

Sometimes I talk back. Maybe sing. 

But at the very least I would experience earth and her silence and the creativity that could thrive in this space. Maybe it would change my life. I would bet my firstborn it would be the best journal entries i would write in my entire life

But I don’t live there. I live here.

In a world where I wake up and check my friends’ stories on Instagram before I even open both eyes.

Where I fall asleep watching sped-up videos of people cooking soup.

Where I "accidentally" spend 48 minutes watching someone organize their fridge in silence.

Where my thumbs know more about me than my own mother.

I guess you could say I’m in a long-term relationship with my phone.

We sleep together. We eat together. We even go to the bathroom together.

(Disgusting. I know. But let’s not pretend we’re better than we are.)

And somewhere, buried under all the DMs and Reels and emails and texts, is the part of me that craves the slow burn of boredom.

The kind of boredom that makes you stare at the wall and see a whole movie.

That kind of sacred silence.

That kind of fertile stillness.

The stuff that poems and paintings and letters come out of.

But instead?

Instead I am interconnected with the world, part of a global dialogues taking place on dozens of platforms at all times. As a result, I am less in touch with myself, my life, my time.

I’m 22, and it is all starting to blur.

And not in a dreamy, romantic, sunset-drenched way.

More like a what-day-is-it-again and how-did-it-get-dark-already kind of way.

I used to think time sped up because I was getting older. That childhood felt long because it was—all those years were bigger pieces of a shorter life. One year was a fifth of my memory. Now it’s a blur. But maybe it’s not just age.

Maybe it’s the damn phone.

So yes. I must find my cottage.

Even if it's not in the Swiss Alps.

Even if there’s no goat.

Even if I still get lonely.

Even if I only get a whisper of that stillness.

I need it.

Because if I don’t?

If I never find my cottage?

I’m scared I’ll wake up one day, still scrolling, still searching, still trying to remember when I last heard my own voice without being shown an endless loop of videos I can’t remember.