Rawdogging Your Life: The Art of Being Present

Raw-dogging is slang for having sex without a condom. But lately, the term means doing anything without the protective cover of distraction.

The popular meme example of this at the moment is rawdogging a flight. To rawdog a flight, means to sit there and do nothing. No in-flight entertainment, no phone, no book, no laptop. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brittanyanas/2024/08/26/the-rawdogging-flights-trend-explained/

Rawdogging forces you to be fully present with your thoughts and the environment around you. 

Rawdogging reminds me of what you do on a retreat. You’re not allowed to talk, read, or write. You spend your days paying attention to what you’re doing: listening to the crunch of gravel under your boots on your walk, watching your knife slice through your food at dinner.

I came home from these retreats slow, and patient, and open, and curious. My little daughter loved me when I got home. “Springwater makes you nicer, Mommy,” she’d say. After ten days of rawdogging my life, I was happy, even-tempered, and accepting.

But as the retreat experience slipped into the past, I returned to my default mode: busy, list-driven, and distracted all the time.

Rawdogging a flight of more than an hour would be out of the question for me. I’d go nuts. That level of raw dogging takes training.

But what if I could build up to it gradually? Because rawdogging seems the way to go, the way we’re supposed to live.

 We’re not supposed to be distracted all the time. 

So, here’s how I’m trying to bring  rawdogging into some of my daily activities. I try to take my walk without listening to podcasts. At least not the entire walk. 

The same goes for doing those mind-numbing household tasks, like loading the dishwasher or folding laundry.  I’m making a valiant effort to do them without listening to music, an audiobook, or a podcast. It’s hard.

Sometimes I ask myself: Why would I even want to do this? Why not use these mindless tasks as an opportunity to become informed and smarter?

But then there’s the thought that I might be losing something more valuable. Like an opportunity for my mind to wander, daydream, and think its own thoughts rather than be all junked up with the thoughts of other people.

When I let media voices in, I drown out my own voice. The constant chatter of podcasters and audiobook narrators doesn’t leave me any space to think.

My mind needs more space.

And what’s even worse, I could very well be missing subtle, but magnificent happenings right under my nose, like the smell of a fresh, warm towel from the dryer, or a sudden prism of light glinting off a newly cleaned water glass.

I worry if I don’t start learning to rawdog my life, I’ll miss it, like when I don’t notice a single thing on the whole car ride home while listening to an audiobook. 

How did I even get here? 

One of my biggest fears is living my life like a robot, programmed by media, news, and cultural conventions. 

But rawdogging my life takes some wanting to do it, and some discipline. It’s much easier to push play than to sit and watch a fire.

It’s much easier to get lost in a flurry of holiday parties and cookies and trees and lights than to stop, slow down, and notice the satisfying way the dough rolls out, or the smell of pine in the house.

So, what do you think? Could you, in some way, rawdog your Christmas?

Could you rawdog shoveling snow?

Could you rawdog wrapping a gift, writing a card, decorating a cookie?

And all I mean by rawdog is notice it as it’s happening: How the light is, what it smells like, how you feel when you’re doing it. Can you live without distracting yourself from it?

Can you rawdog some little part of your life?