After The Hiatus: So What?

I sat here for the better part of a month, trying to write some sort of quotable, useful, chock-full-of-Instagram-worthy-wisdom post about how enlightened I am since taking a break from social media in November. (Spoiler: I'm so enlightened. Clearly.)

Then, I figured: I'll make a list! People are busy. They don't have time, energy, or attention to devote to a New Yorker-style diatribe of dozens of pages with ten-dollar words and hifalutin prose. People dig lists. They read them. They might even comment on them. That's what it's all about, isn't it? (Oh. Wait. See item 7 below.)

EIGHT THINGS I LEARNED FROM MY SOCIAL MEDIA BREAK:

[Number 1 will surprise you! One simple trick! Other clickbaity language!]

1. I am physically, mentally, and circumstantially incapable of maintaining a blog on a daily basis. This one goes without saying, so we'll get it out of the way first. To all two of my faithful readers: I hope you were still able to get something out of the scant posting I did last month!

2. Some things went really well. I got a lot of reading done, and I found that I wasn't going through the "withdrawals" that I was expecting. There were a few hobbies I kept up, like crocheting a few Christmas gifts. I also substituted the ongoing election season yelling matches for Reading The Actual News, which did a lot more for my mental wellbeing and, honestly, my ability to get actual information. (As an unexpected bonus, I somehow stopped playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons cold turkey, and at this point I'm afraid to go back to my island, lest I find it in a wintry disarray and full of cartoon animals in various states of decomposition.)

3. Not all of it went well. I was so sure that I would be able to hammer out the rest of my novel with all of this free time, but I scarcely wrote a paragraph. Part of that is due to the fact that I write best when I am (1) alone and (2) in a good mental/emotional state, and due to [gestures wildly at everything about 2020] those are luxuries that I've gone without for much of the year.

4. When there's a will to have a Time Suck, there's a way. Sure, I deleted all of my social apps and deactivated Facebook for a whole month, and those things felt freeing. But there was always something fidgety I'd do to occupy my time: compulsively checking the news and downloading mobile games that I for sure did not need in my life were the front-runners. The root of the problem could easily be our addiction to social media, but it goes a little deeper than that, I think. We can't deal with boredom. If we're waiting in a long line, or if the ad breaks on your streaming service are a mind-blowing forty-five seconds long, we're conditioned to reach for our device to do something else. Now look, I'm not saying that I've arrived and that I have overcome said conditioning, but little changes in behavior over time will yield better results. When I feel the inclination to whip my phone out and scroll aimlessly, I try to give myself a one-second "should I do this?" evaluation. Sometimes it works. It's definitely not perfected.

5. I felt more connected to others. I tried to check in one-on-one with friends and family a bit more. When I successfully did this, my relationships felt more genuine. It's a tendency that I hope to continue long after the dust from the ol' hiatus has settled. True conversations—whether via phone, text, Facetime, or even in person—enrich the relationships around us far beyond the limits of social media.

6. And yet, I felt more isolated than ever. When I finally logged back into Facebook after over a month of deactivation, I was a little overwhelmed. All of these conversations among all of these people were going on in full swing, and they had been going on without me. This makes perfect sense, of course, but it felt... weird. I was hit with a wave of guilt for abandoning my post (pun intended, maybe?) and thereby sacrificing communication opportunities in a world that is already so isolated right now. Even weeks later, I feel like keeping up is just something I can't do. I'll still try to do so, but guys, it's daunting out there.

7. I'll still be on social. Heck, I've got my Facebook tab open right now on my laptop in eager anticipation of posting the link to my finished blog. I still get on Insta and Twitter, and I scroll through my Reddit subscriptions about once a day. The important thing is that I don't let these communication tools rule me. I set timers on my phone for each app to keep me from scrolling forever. I don't share every single little thing that's on my mind. In fact...

8. You guys probably don't care about what I post. AND THAT IS OKAY. I promise you I don't fault you one bit. There's a lot of noise out there. It's hard to process it all. This was one of the more valuable takeaways I had from this mini-break from social media. It's not to say you should never post anything on your social media ever (I just broke that rule by posting the link to my blog on Facebook—helloooo, Heidi Hypocrite!), but sometimes, it's better to send it to others more directly. If I've taken a cute picture of my kids/pets/spouse, I'll usually send it directly to some friends and family. If I have an opinion on politics, I may discuss it with others outside of the digital world (it's harder to block, mock, or defriend someone when they're sitting across from you. Not impossible, but harder). If I see a hilarious meme that reminds me of a friend of mine, I'll text it to her directly. See? Intentional connection. It's a beautiful thing.

This blog may go defunct unless I attempt this experiment again. Who's to say I won't? Until then, I'll leave these words floating out there, and I'll see you in that great wide somewhere, one way or another.