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How I Escaped The Digital Trap And Rediscovered Authentic Human Connection
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"I know what addiction looks like from the inside. I know how it convinces you that you're in control when you're not." Geoff Watkinson is a writer based in Carlsbad, California. His essays and reviews have appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Guernica, storySouth, Atticus Review, The Humanist, The San Diego Union-Tribune, and elsewhere. He works as a senior proposal writer for a federal IT contractor and teaches writing at California State University San Marcos and MiraCosta College. He holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Old Dominion University. More at geoffwatkinson.blog. This article originally appeared on HuffPost in January 2026.