It’s hard to believe that it’s been an entire month (Jan 7th-Feb. 7th) without seeing facebook posts or reading my twitter timeline. I have to say that it’s been wonderful and frustrating at different times throughout the process. Most of the time I have enjoyed freedom from comparison and have felt much less depressed than I was a month ago. Other times I felt frustrated that I didn’t know about something Drumpf (yes that’s how I’ll refer to Mr. President here) said or tweeted, or that I didn’t know about Beyonce’s pregnancy instagram post. I found myself constantly looking to podcasts from NPR and Science Mike to keep me updated. In the mornings I listened to NPR for Morning Edition as well as on the way home so that I knew what the news of the day had been. Oddly enough, I do think this was a well-timed break with the inauguration and literally all of the insanity that has happened in the last 2 weeks or so.
The first week was almost too easy. I was very busy at work and when I had a moment to spare, I spent it looking for apartments online and playing on pinterest for wedding planning (which is the only reason I didn’t include pinterest on my social media fast). I couldn’t believe how much I was accomplishing simply by removing the social media distraction. Instead of being bored and scrolling through my “newsfeed” I was looking at apartments and amenities, looking up recipes, looking for fun wedding ideas/themes, etc. I felt extremely productive.
I also joined Weight Watchers again and have been enjoying getting healthier and losing some weight! The most hilarious part is they now have their own social media called “Connect” on the app where you can post pictures and support one another. It’s basically twitter, facebook, and instagram for weight watchers only. I didn’t go on very often but occasionally. I kept telling myself that it wasn’t cheating because this was basically an extension to my weekly meeting. It’s pretty helpful actually and I think it’ll help me be successful to get to goal.
The last week was more challenging as things slowed down at work and I was running out of apartment listings to look into. I also found myself wanting to login and scroll through my timelines at home because I wasn’t interested in the TV or just out of boredom/curiosity. There were a few times that R would see a post and tell me about them (like baby announcements!!) or I would accidentally see his screen as he looked on Instagram and glance at the picture for a second before looking away…but those moments only made it harder because I became more interested to see what other things I may have missed. I even asked him to post on my behalf one time because I didn’t want my friends to think I wasn’t excited for them. One day during my lunchtime walk at work, I began thinking of all the people that I used to keep in touch with and wondering why I hadn’t heard from them…then I remembered…our connection was only through FB posts/updates. Which isn’t a judgement on those friendships at all, just a funny observation.
One of the most unexpected (yet not surprising) things that happened was that I started getting emails like these below:
dfdfbfgngngngngngngngngngngggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg
Like I said, I’m not surprised, but it was an odd reality check to know that these sites monitor your account activity and they knew I wasn’t logging on and tried to get me to come back.
Today marks returning to social media and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Sure it’s nice to have something to look at when I’m bored or to easily keep in touch with friends & family. But the reason that I decided to take myself off-line still exists within me and even in the 30 minutes or so that I spent looking at all these sites this morning, I felt as though I didn’t miss much. Now I’m looking to see how I want to use social media and how I’d like to unplug more often. This month showed me how much happier I am without social media on a regular basis. I met up with a friend the other day and she mentioned to me that she only checks FB on the weekends, so I may follow her lead and do the same. We’ll see though. I’m much more active on twitter (and more informed on news through that source than anything else) and even on Instagram, so it should be easy to limit FB to weekends.
For anyone thinking about trying this out, I highly recommend it. I feel better about myself and accomplished a lot in the past month! I didn’t feel like I was missing out (too much) because I was too busy doing my own thing rather than just watching what everyone else was doing. Unplug and do what you want to do. It’s freeing and exhilarating.
The last picture I’ll share is the notifications I came back to. It’s funny because a LOT of it is just a notification that someone posted a picture or updated a status. Seems like someone was pretty desperate for me to come back *wink *.
Everyday Erika 