Social Media Break (Part 1???)

I inadvertently took the past week off of social media. I logged off all the apps on Thursday night to avoid all the 9/11 posts on Friday. My original intent was to just take Friday off, but then I remembered that if I log back on Saturday, Instagram will just show me everyone’s Friday posts. Bleh. So I decided to take Sunday off, too. No big deal. There are lots of weekends where I don’t check in very much, or go whole days without logging on.

Last weekend was great! The first 2 days I 100% went through withdrawals, picking up my phone 1,000 times an hour in a compulsion to know what everyone was doing. The vast frontier of free time I looked out on left me feeling confused. How in the world do I fill all of this time? And then I remembered, I can do whatever in the fuck I want! So I did.

I took a recorded yoga class, I watched a bunch of episodes of GBBO, I finished watching The Last Dance, I read a whole ass book and finished 3 more, I painted my nails, I watched the Toni Morrison documentary, I watched She-Devil, John and I bought a game and taught ourselves how to play it, I texted pictures of Nomi to my friends, and most importantly, I slept through the night for the first time in months.

On Monday, after 3 full nights of sleep and markedly less anxiety, I was like, dooooooo I want to go back on these apps? Reader, I did not. So I didn’t. And now here we are a full 7 days later. I am rested. I am caught up on work and emails. I wrote about 1,250 words of a new essay. I have not once in 7 days wondered who’s mad at me. I’ve been having dizzy spells for the past few weeks (anxiety), those are gone. Tightness in my chest, feeling like my heart is racing - gone.

All of this begs the question, why go back? Indeed. Why? Well, first of all, I’m a dumb-dumb who made the internet my job. So, there’s that. But I miss seeing posts and stories from my friends. I don’t use Facebook, so Instagram is where I see all of your pics of your children and pets, which I immensely enjoy seeing.

The biggest thing I realized is how much of other people’s anger I’m letting into my day - people I know, but mostly people I don’t. So that’s going to stop. As far as Instagram goes, I did a big follower purge and unfollowed people I don’t know, particularly anyone who I have a strong anger response to. I follow most of those people on Twitter already, and I go to Twitter with the expectation of getting angry, so that’s fine. But I’m going to quit letting so much Instagram Anger™️ into my day. To quote patron saint of the internet, Sam Irby, “I have enough hate in my heart to start a car.” I’m good. I don’t need anyone else’s anger.

One of the most illuminating things about this week has been how much I don’t think I want to be online. Anytime I found myself without something to do, I thought about what would feel good. Did I want to lay on the couch and watch Gilmore Girls, did I want to read, did I want to sit outside and listen to an audiobook, did I want to talk to someone, DID I WANT NEWS? I never give myself the space to do this. Instead, I just pick up my phone every time I finish doing something, or don’t know what to do next, or feel lonely/bored/uncomfortable/etc.

I can’t go off these apps because I accidentally made them my job, but jesus christ, the amount of poison we all just apparently agreed to live with is….something. These apps are going to kill us all. The end! 😄