One day near the end of August, I felt like I had been on social media all day and all week and I was exhausted. It occurred to me that the only proper break I had ever taken from everything was a week long break and I remember feeling like it was really great. I knew this time, I wanted it to be at least a month long but I also knew that if I waited to start on the 1st of September, I may have lost my ginger – so there and then, I made a quick note to put on my blog related accounts, signed out and deleted the apps from my devices. The first day wasn’t a full day- I probably decided at like 2pm on the 27th of August and then went off at 4pm.
My fantasy when I decided to go off was something like this- I would become the sort of person that wakes up at 4.30, does a light mediation, gets out of bed and has a hot drink, then works out and then works for a solid 4-5 hours straight before relaxing into more engaged forms of entertainment. What really happened was that the first thing I realised is that I was…depressed.
Depression manifests very differently for everyone and even for the same person, it can be different every time. For me, I was finding it difficult to do anything. I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t do the smallest tasks. This isn’t really a post about that but I can say, I’m feeling better now, and limiting my distractions helped me to zero in on the feeling and deal with it.
I did get out of bed sooner. I’ve always been an early riser- morning person, but i’ve often woken up and spent the morning in bed, just scrolling. Now, I was awake and out of bed within 10 minutes.
In September, I read 27 books, but in the whole time I was off social media, I read about 30 books. I usually interrupt reading with scrolling on socials, but I was able to just read books from start to finish without stopping. The last time I was off social media for a week, I read 3 books on the first day. This time, it was more like a book a day for the first two weeks but I did a lot of other things too- like play a lot of candy crush, watch most of friends, download reddit on my phone for the first time and actually read some forums, read magazines and every lifestyle website I could find from multiple countries. I watched A LOT of youtube, listened to podcasts, learnt how to skip and started skipping and did a lot of writing, thinking and editing.
I had extremely vivid dreams about everything. I had a dream about the characters of friends, about candy crush, YouTube -I think because I was focusing so much more on things, the things I dis become embedded in my subconscious and my dreams were deeper. I also slept earlier when I got into bed. With nothing really to distract me in bed, sleeping AND waking up were easier.
At the beginning of lockdown, I did a lot of thinking. On this break, the thinking was x100. The difference is this time, I wasn’t just thinking- I was processing. I wasn’t just thinking things and pushing them down, I was working through my emotions and events I had experienced.
One of the things I wanted to improve on when I took the break was Instagram shopping. I had started a phase of constantly shopping on Instagram. There were days were I would receive multiple deliveries of things I didn’t really need. I was able to stop that since I wasn’t on Instagram which was actually really satisfying. I spent more money on stuff I really wanted and I went to actual shops to buy things, which meant that I often made better decisions.
It was nice to not constantly know what everyone’s opinion on things were. I was able to think clearly about what I wanted without getting inspired by other people’s lives. It made it easier to create a fitness routine that I’ve been able to stick to. I also got clarity about the illustration style and writing style I wanted to focus on developing.
I did miss a lot of milestones, not just birthdays, but business launches, etc- some I’m aware of now, but some I will probably never find out, and that was definitely a disadvantage. However, I was more aware about remembering milestones without relying on stumbling on it on socials and asking more questions when I had conversations with my friends.
I had very very few conversations- there were days where I didn’t speak to anyone other than my husband. I’m mentioning this as something that happened, but it was neither a good or a bad thing. I don’t mind that I have a lot of friendships that thrive most on social media. I think that form of friendship is just as valid as calls or texts or constant communication. I didn’t feel lonely or isolated and I never had FOMO- mostly because I had no idea what I was missing out on.
I’m looking forward to taking a candy crush break, ranting about friends (the TV show) and reading a lot less. The downside of reading so many books is realising that there really aren’t that many books that I WANT to read and reading for me is about enjoyment more than it is about metrics- I’m really happy reading fewer books and not running out of stuff to read.
There is so much less content in the world than I thought. So much content creation is focused on temporary platforms, there is very little content (that I’m interested in) that exists outside of this, which made me extra determined to buckle down on creating some. If you’ve been looking for a reason to create longer lasting content, this is it please. There are literally hundreds of thousands of books published every year and so much of it, I’m not interested in. This made me feel so much more confident in editing my book because I realised that a world existed for it.
You may have noticed on the blog, but not being exposed to opinions often made me more confident. I blogged posts like this and this that I probably wouldn’t have published because the voices of disdain and attack would have been in my head. There is so much complaint and attack of people on socials. The only thing that reminded me of it was reading reader reviews on goodreads where people got extra offended by fictional characters being less than perfect. Fictional characters will continue to be imperfect because humans aren’t perfect and that standard applies so harshly on social media. We crowd source virtue and try to force it on everyone from the way people shower to how they cleanse their faces to how they live their lives even when it doesn’t affect anyone else. We police thoughts and words in a way that’s scary when you step out of it. In it, it starts to feel normal, but out of it and it’s like ARE WE INSANE? How can we feel comfortable expressing actual disgust at things like people not making their bed everyday or using the wrong soap to wash their face or whatever else. It’s a bit insane and I definitely would like to stay out of things like that.
I liked choosing what content I consumed and being in touch with my instincts more than before.
I also realise that social media advocates for this sort of utopia where you only do the things you want to do in life and nothing else and that’s just not true of life. I touched on this idea here and will probably write about it again, but sometimes life takes effort and we have to do some things even when we don’t want to.
Even though I didn’t get out the fantasy I wanted from my social media break, I think I did get a ridiculous amount of positive stuff from it and I am so glad I did it. I don’t know how it will affect my usage going forward and how much I’m going to end up keeping all the lessons I’ve learnt but I’m excited to see and I’m glad this posts exists for me to remember the lessons I learnt.