Hello guys! So for the past week, I have been doing something a little different. I have been staying off of social media entirely.

Why did I decide to do this?

Well, for a lot of reasons. Online drama, the constant negative news cycle, and expectations to produce more than to consume. I wasn’t having fun, and like the kids say these days, it was time for me “to go touch grass”.

At first, it was a little hard the first day. I am not really a person who is completely reliant on social media. I typically only use it to produce content and only try to be on it less than 5 minutes a day. If I am on it other than to produce then I consider it wasteful consuming.

Consuming can be fine in moderation. If I am doing more consuming and less creating, then it’s time to reevaluate how I am spending my time. There needs to be a balance at the very least. For me, I strictly try to use it to put my words and video creations out there.

I would rotate through my social media. Bluesky one day, Threads another, and so on. Depending on how well I do on each and by my analytics I would be on one for a couple days or until x amount of posts, and then go to the next.

When it’s time to unplug

It came to a point again, where I felt overwhelmed from all the reasons I gave. The last straw happened a week ago. I realized then how much it was all affecting me. I needed a break.

I decided to ditch it for one week, just to clear my head. I felt that one week, was an okay amount of time. I didn’t want to completely isolate and cut myself off from online friends and communities. I just really needed to do a lot of self reflection and deep decompressing.

I used my free time to work on my book, read, play guitar, learn new recipes. It was all very healing. Of course, there would be times where I’d get a text or a call here and there from a friend telling me, “Guess what happened today!” (news related) and I would have to decompress after the talk.

It wasn’t all sunshine and daisies. But the week long break away from prying eyes, doom scrolling, and burn out, was refreshing.

What I learned

I learned about the importance in living outside of social media. I use to say I had a healthy relationship with it. I don’t have any push notifications on for any apps, I use screen time and app limits to keep from spending all my time mindlessly scrolling, and yet it wasn’t the constant dopamine hits or the validation from social media that was consuming my mind.

It was that I was taking it all way too seriously.

Being left on delivered doesn’t mean someone hates me. Just because x happened doesn’t mean the world will end this moment. Producing less content doesn’t mean I’m going to “fall off”. Because what is the point of using social media, if it’s not for fun?

I was becoming too intense about everything. Sometimes it really isn’t that serious. Sometimes it’s okay to just unplug and take care of yourself in a busy world. 😌