The plan for yesterday’s post was for me to write an update on my digital cleanse, but the words just aren’t coming. So enjoy a selection of my texts to my digital accountability group over the month that I took off of social media.
September 30: There's something that I feel is lacking about me where I feel like I need to see events filtered through other people's perspectives before I can come to my own conclusions on it. And that annoys me. But maybe I'm just looking for validation of my own feelings or something. Just random thoughts about social media...
October 11: I realized when I’m not on my phone, my whole world is just my kids in my house, especially during the pandemic. I really love knowing about arts and culture and what’s going on in the wider world so that connection is still important to me. Last time we did this we started ordering the Sunday New York Times and that filled the space pretty well. Will be ordering it today.
October 14: Just drafted and scheduled my “I’m taking a break” IG post. 😬 just out of curiosity, how long does it take y’all to create a post? Part of the whole stress of it is that it takes so much time for me! That one took a bit more thought than usual, but with figuring out which image to use and drafting it, it took 45 minutes!
October 19: I'm having a bit of a down cycle. Last week (first week off social media) was so amazing and I felt so great and now the euphoria is wearing off.
October 23: My week was just ok. It was like I had a week of feeling really great not to have the background noise of it, but then this week I realized I still don't have mechanisms in place for when I need to soothe myself or just whenever I would normally reach for it. Spent a lot of time on the Crossword app and one day this week I spent a ton of time shopping for and buying warm clothes for the winter, which I feel totally fine about.
October 27: Another question for everyone. I’m in week 3-ish and it’s shocking how I still don’t know what to do with myself when I don’t have anything to “check”. For instance, when you’ve put in a couple of good focused mental work, how do you reward yourself or take a break if not by checking social media??? 😬 I know that I want my answer to be something about checking in with my body or getting into my body, but that is not what I actually want to do.
Oct 28: One of my goals was to get off of Facebook. I’ve gotten other admins for the groups I run, broadcast that I’m shutting down my group, and set a date of Nov 1. I don't care about my personal page, but I’m still having a bit of resistance to shutting down my business page there.
November 12: My husband is on a 6 day bike packing trip. Rough day. Really just want a pacifier and want to download IG and just scroll, but I know that won't actually make me feel any better. 😩
November 16: So I just posted for the first time in a month, interested to see how it goes today. Lots of pressure about having something meaningful to say. So I didn't really say anything meaningful. 😂 also just watching myself to see the impulses and urges. Now my brain is going to thinking what if no one likes my post. Again just kind of watching it all go by in my head. I'm even having to restrain myself from opening the app while I'm driving to see how much response there has been. It's wild. So yeah, realizing I don't have a plan for when to check and respond to things. That is probably going to be important so that I don't just have free reign to be on it all day.
November 17: First two days back are going well. I tried to limit my check-ins yesterday and mostly only responded to my comments and DM's, didn't get too stuck in scrolling. Today I've been completely off per the plan. No desire to check.
November 19: I might need some help today. I couldn't sleep very well last night, and I spent a lot of time in the rabbit hole of Instagram. Something about the combination of being hurt and not able to do my usual activities is giving me some sort of sense that I can have an exception to my rules. Today is an off day for Instagram for me and I want to stick to that. I have lots of good books to read and shows I can watch while I am stuck in bed and honestly what a nice break.