Everyone who knows me knows that I am a tech-junky. In particular, I’m a bit of an Apple Fanboy. I am always tapping away at my MacBook Pro or iPhone or iPad. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it can become a bit obsessive.
In fact, I’ve been thinking about my social media consumption and production lately and I think it’s time for a break. Conveniently for me, my iPhone is dead and I’m not going to replace it until next month.
So, for the month of July I’m fasting from social media. Here are the parameters I am laying out for myself:
No Twitter. No tweeting, no reading other people’s tweets. A lot of time I’m not really living in the moment, rather I’m trying to capture the moment to share with others in 140 characters or less.
No Facebook. I don’t need to catch up on everyone’s lives, photos, and status updates this month. I also don’t need to share everything from my world. Sorry to everyone with July birthdays…you’ll just have to live without me saying “happy birthday.”
No Blogging. Most of the time, I love writing for my blog. Sometimes it’s a chore. This month, it doesn’t matter because I won’t be doing any of it.
No Reading Blogs. This one might be the hardest for me, since I have a lot of blogs I like to keep up on and no one would know if I snuck a peak. But it’s time for some offline thinking.
Limited Email. I’ll periodically check my personal email, but for the most part I’m going to let my assistant handle my work email. If something earth-shattering is happening that needs my attention, I’ll have her let me know but for the most part I don’t think the world will end if I don’t respond to email. To this end, I’m going to disconnect my iPad from my work email account so it’s harder for me to access. Maybe I’ll let my assistant change my password too. Yeah, I think I will.
So what will I do with all of the time / mental energy I save?
Read books. I have a whole lot of books I want to catch up on (and yes, a bunch of them are on my iPad…not giving that up).
Read the Bible, pray, and plan for the fall.
Vacation with the Fam. This month I have the coolest vacation plans ever but I don’t need to share every detail of them online.
That’s about it. My plan is to be back online in August. Who knows, though, I may like this offline world more than I think…