Lately, I’ve been feeling down. I’m sad, frustrated, upset, and immobilized. The pandemic, quarantine, loss of people, friends, and family and the social things that kept my small tiny little life happy has really gotten to me. The politics and obvious blatant racism and pain in the world. Just pain everywhere. It’s awful and horrible.
I am on Instagram and Facebook. I have a Twitter account that I don’t really use but periodically get pulled to when I click on something that brings me to it. I watch YouTube and I do not even know what qualifies as social media anymore because just being on my computer or phone brings up notifications that pull me away from what I want to do and draws me down into a rabbit hole.
I am reading a book called, “Digital Minimalism” by Cal Newport. I loved his book, “Deep Work” and I’m enjoying this book. It’s about our digital life and how we no longer have control over our actions, thoughts, uses. He’s much more eloquent than I am and I’m probably saying it wrong. But I realize that I’m letting social media control my moods – I get sad, upset, jealous/envious, and angry after I check Insta/FB to see what’s going on. I know I should know better than to feel this way when I see friends post certain things. I know I should be better at putting my phone down, shutting my computer off, and doing the things that really matter. I’ve often thought of deactivating my accounts and I still haven’t done it.
But some things have got to change. I am tired of this unmotivated, sad, angry feeling that has consumed me recently.
I can’t go off completely. I run the Facebook group for my quilt guild. I am also technically in charge of the guild’s Instagram account and by technically, it’s because I created the account and I monitor it. But since Covid, I’ve not really posted anything on it. I also run our zoom weekly quilting bee on Sundays to help keep the guild connected to each other. I moved the apps on my phone to another page further away from my home screen that is slightly more difficult for me to get to. That way it’s more of a conscious choice to get to it. I may apply more rules to myself but so far, I’ve decreased my contact on social media and taking back more of my time and becoming more positive.
As part of my evening ritual, I am not allowed to check Facebook or Instagram after 7pm. I just started doing this in the last couple of weeks and my sleep has improved dramatically. My fit bit broke a recently so I can’t give you real numbers but in terms of feeling, I’m waking up much better each day more regularly than before.
~always,
Melanie
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