Living Life in the Real World

Image courtesy of mpora.com

Recently, I've found that I am less and less interested in spending time on my phone perusing the various social media sites that I've made a large part of my life. When I look back on it, I've spent an inordinate amount of time over the years on social media. Most of that time has been spent on Facebook with Instagram, YouTube, and a game that I play taking up the rear. If it's not one of those, I'm just doing various things with other phone apps. It's like I almost couldn't bear to spend more than a few seconds away from my phone. Honestly, it was completely ridiculous and I dare say...an addiction.

I don't know if there was anything in particular that got me thinking I was done with it all, but it happened nonetheless. One day, I just didn't feel like wasting all of my free time staring and scrolling through status after status, story after story, meme after meme, and photo or video after photo or video. I deleted the Messenger app and my game and slowly moved away from using Facebook - although I have kept it, for now.

I do need to say a couple of things:

1. I'm not trying to make other people feel bad about using social media. These are just my personal reflections on myself, my life, and my own social media usage.

2. I feel that social media can be a great thing and, to that end, I still use it for all of my author-related things. I'm talking strictly my use as it pertains to my regular life.

Since I all but stopped using social media, I find myself spending my free time away from work actually getting things done that I need to get done. I'm enjoying hobbies that I haven't indulged in, in quite a long time, such as reading, watching documentaries and baking. I'm spending more quality time with my kids, making meals together, talking, and playing games.

What I've noticed most about cutting loose the strings that bound me to social media is just how present I feel in my own life now. I'm engaged, active, and free of the distractions that social media inadvertently give us. It's exactly the same effect that I experienced when I started uninstalling my social media apps during my vacations, but now I can live that way virtually all of the time. I do admit that it was kind of a weird thing to get used to at first as I am so used to grabbing my phone to check social media that I still do it blindly. I'm sure that will pass with time.

Have a great weekend. I hope you do something fun and adventurous.