On vulnerability, excitement, and new adventures

Announcing my new website and my switch to Substack

When I first started working on How to Break Up With Your Phone, I sent out an email to my mailing list asking if anyone wanted to be a “guinea pig” and participate in my research for the book. Perhaps you were on the list; perhaps you responded. If so, thank you, because that book was a leap of faith: at that point, in 2017 or so, very few people were talking about the possibility that phones and apps might be addictive, and only one publishing house expressed interest in the idea (Ten Speed Press, which usually publishes cookbooks). How to Break Up With Your Phone received the lowest advance of any of my books to date.

But with your help, I stuck with it, and used your feedback to write the book. Fast forward to today: the book’s sold over 115,000 copies (!) and is being published in more than 35 countries. I’m thrilled that it’s reached so many people, and will always be grateful to those of you who shared your personal stories and feedback. I could not have written it without you.

What you might not know, though, is how hard it was to hit send on that initial email. It felt terrifying to send a note to thousands of people, most of whom I didn’t know, and tell them about my new creative project (not to mention ask them to be a part of it).

I distinctly remember sitting at my desk at the co-working space where I used to be a member, and calling my friend Josh for moral support. Ever a source of wise (or at least blunt) advice, he told me to take a deep breath, “watch some Brené Brown videos about vulnerability” and hit send.

So I did: I watched her TED talk, inhaled as deeply as I could, and sent the email.

And then, thanks to some sort of glitch in my formatting, the emails bounced back. Like, every single one. And not in a batch—they arrived in a steady stream of Mailchimp error messages, a waterfall of rejection. It was horrible (but also kind of funny). So I called Josh back, watched Brené Brown AGAIN, took another deep breath, and hit send for the second time.

And now, seven years later, here we are: a global community, thousands strong. I truly can’t believe it. Writing How to Break Up With Your Phone has changed my life in more ways than I ever would have thought possible, from providing me with space to find new passions and make new friends, to inspiring my next book (The Power of Fun), launching my speaking career, and helping me realign my own priorities. I am a far better parent and partner, and a happier person overall. In short: I am so grateful I sent that email.

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Why am I telling you this story? Two reasons. First, to thank you: not only did you help me write How to Break Up With Your Phone, but you inspired and participated in its sequel, The Power of Fun. You’ve shown up for my live calls and webinars; the supportive emails and notes that you’ve sent me over the years are what make being a writer worth it.

And the second reason I’ve got Brené Brown on my mind is that I’m trying to work up the nerve to hit send on what is now a much bigger list, telling you about a new creative endeavor. Which is:

I’m launching a new television series with Oprah Winfrey.

No. I’m just kidding. (And trying to manifest.)

I’m launching a Substack.

That might not sound that thrilling (especially compared to Oprah), but I’m actually really excited about it. If you haven’t heard of it, Substack is a newsletter platform specifically designed to support writers and help them connect more directly with their readers. It offers lots of cool options that are not available on normal newsletter platforms, such as a “threads” feature where we can have conversations as a community, a home page where readers can find an archive of all your work, and the ability for those who are interested to financially support my work. Also, it’s fun to write in—which is a big deal, because the past few years have left me, like many people, feeling very burned out. I’ve been thinking a lot about how to reconnect with my love of writing and how to expand and deepen this community, and Substack seems like the right place for both. I hope that you’ll enjoy it, and that you’ll consider becoming a paid subscriber. Speaking of which . . .

What do you need to do?

As a pre-existing subscriber, you don’t have to do anything: you’re already on my list and will continue to receive all my free posts. But I also have an optional paid subscription plan, which you can learn about below. If you’re able, it would be wonderful if you’d consider going paid: not only will it give you access to some special features, like community chats and discussion threads, but your financial support will enable me to devote myself more fully to this Substack (right now, it’s a labor of love).

Paid Benefits:

• Full access to all posts

• Special 20% discount on my digital products and courses (including a 30-day phone breakup course and a two-week course on how to have more fun)

• Special discounts on recommended products

• Priority sign-up for live calls & workshops

• Access to community discussion threads, chats, live Q&As, and the ability to leave comments

• Huge gratitude from me for financially supporting my work

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Why “How to Feel Alive”?

I decided to call it How to Feel Alive because to me, that’s the driving force behind everything I do. It doesn’t matter if I’m writing about phones or fun or vitamins or travel or health or, really, anything: it’s all part of my underlying mission of trying to learn and experience as much as I can (and, in the case of health, both feel and stay alive)—and I want to share these experiences and insights with you. I realized that by switching to Substack, not only can I connect directly with readers who appreciate and want to support my work, but I can write about the things that I want to write about, in a way that reflects who I actually am—which is to say curious, a bit quirky, and obsessed with spending my short time on this planet feeling as alive as I possibly can.

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What I’m going to write about:

For those of you looking for a bit more information, here are some of the things I anticipate writing about:

Screen/Life Balance

As the author of How to Break Up With Your Phone and creator of Screen/Life Balance, I’ve spent years thinking about our relationships with technology, experimenting, and developing practical, evidence-backed suggestions for how we all can create boundaries and practices that enable us to keep the good parts of technology and minimize or eliminate the bad. Also, I’m intending to do some writing specifically on the subject of kids and phones, since as the parent of an 8-year-old, that’s a challenge that’s on my own horizon, too.

How (and Why) to Have More Fun

Through my research for The Power of Fun and my personal experience, I’ve come to believe that if we want to feel more alive, we need to prioritize fun—which I define as the magical confluence of playfulness, connection and flow. The more we can incorporate these three states into our daily existence, the more alive we will feel.

In my Substack, I’ll share my insights and advice on how to have more fun (plus stories of my own attempts to do so—not all of which are successful!), plus invitations to live calls and workshops.

How to Feel More Connected

I am obsessed with how we can feel more connected — to other people, to our communities, and to ourselves. As an only child and life-long freelancer, I’ve crafted a life for myself that, while full of independence, often leaves me feeling alone. I also spend a lot of time engaged in intellectual work, which, while satisfying in its own way, leaves me very disconnected from my body and senses. And even after living in the same city for more than a decade, I still don’t feel particularly attached to place.

In short, connection is my newest fixation: I want to figure out how to have more of it in my life, and I want to share my adventures and insights with you.

(As a side note, I’m hoping that this Substack itself will provide a source of connection: paid subscribers will have the ability to leave comments, ask questions of each other, share advice, and engage in community discussions.)

Q&As, Recommendations, Book Reviews and Roundups

I have a lot of interesting friends and acquaintances and love nothing more than introducing people I like to one another and sharing their work. I’ve also got tons of books that I love, and have tried/curated a lot of screen/life balance-related products over the years, and would love to tell you about those, too (sometimes with special discounts for paid subscribers).

Random things that interest, inspire or delight me

I have a lot of interests, and they don’t necessarily fit into neat boxes. For example:

Health, Nutrition, and Medicine: I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when I was 22 years old, which completely changed the way I think about health and food, and led me to become a health and science journalist. In fact, before I wrote How to Break Up With Your Phone, I spent three years writing a book about the history of vitamins and nutrition. It’s called Vitamania: How Vitamins Revolutionized the Way We Think About Food and is a great book, if I do say so myself, even though very few people bought it. So you can expect some snippets from that, too. (Unexpected bonus of this Substack: it prevents scurvy.) These days, I’m getting my dorky medical fix by hosting a podcast from New York Presbyterian Hospital called Advances in Care, for which I interview doctors and researchers who are at the cutting edge of their fields.

Travel, experiments, and trying new things: I love traveling, trying new things, and writing personal essays about my adventures—so you can expect some of those as well, including some pieces I wrote when my husband and I spent seven months traveling the world before settling down (we thought of it as our “pretirement”), and essays from a (unpublished) collection that I wrote in grad school called “Uncomfortable Experiences of Personal Growth,” some of which apparently were so uncomfortable that no one wanted to publish them. (I thought they were funny?) I’ve also done many odd things in my life that I have I subsequently written about, such as worm composting, forcing my husband to attend a Lithuanian water aerobics class, and spending a week only consuming things that I had Vitamixed. And then there was that one time my husband and I ate roadkill. (Like I said: I’m curious.)

Delights: Recently, I’ve taken up a delight practice, which means that I try to make a point each day to notice, appreciate, and share things that delight me (big shout-out to poet Ross Gay for this idea!). So you can also expect me to hear about some of my delights—and have me encourage you to share some of yours. In fact, I’m hoping to offer a group delight text chain, using the Substack “chat” for paid subscribers, so that we all can share our delights with each other.

Speaking of delights, I also have a dog, whom I won’t necessarily write about, but she’s very cute and often sits on the couch next to me while I’m working, so, you know, you might as well meet her, too.

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Know someone else who might be interested (in this Substack and, I suppose, my dog)? Invite them to join us!

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I hope you’ll enjoy this new adventure. And regardless of whether you go for a paid subscription, thank you for being a member of my community, a subscriber to my newsletter, and a participant in this experiment. I’m excited to see where this goes!

To scrolling less and living more,

Catherine Price

PS: A less nerve-wracking announcement: I just launched a new version of my website at CatherinePrice.com. It’s a consolidation of my two old websites—CatherinePrice.com and ScreenLifeBalance.com, and has resource hubs for both Screen/Life Balance and for fun, links to my courses and products, and more. It should be a lot easier and clearer to navigate.

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PPS: It occurs to me that there are a lot of people on this list from a lot of different sources, and you might not even remember how you got here or who I am. So if you’ve made it to this email and are scratching your head, first, thanks for reading this whole thing without even knowing who it’s from, and second . . .

I’m Catherine Price.

I’m a health and science journalist, author, speaker, and generally curious person (in all senses of the word).

Over the course of my career as a freelance journalist, I’ve written articles and books about everything from health and nutrition to mindfulness to travel to technology to fun, and my work has been featured in places including The Best American Science Writing, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, the BBC, CBS This Morning, and Good Morning America, among others. These days, I also spend a lot of time giving talks and presentations, and have had the chance to speak in front of some amazing audiences, including those at TED, The Aspen Ideas Festival, SXSW and Leadercast—in fact, in astounding news, my TED talk about fun was the 2nd most viewed talk for all of 2022.

I have a longstanding interest in turning my personal issues into professional projects, which is what inspired me to create the Screen/Life Balance movement, and to write my two latest books: How to Break Up With Your Phone, and The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again — and is now inspiring me to write this Substack.

My goal is to help people, including myself, scroll less and live more—and have fun along the way.

Here’s a video with a bit more about me and my work.

And the TED talk: