I’m back from my month long Social Media Fast. Did you miss me?
I figured my first post should be a little look at what this month has been like without Twitter, Facebook, and blogs.
Week 1
Countless times a day, I found myself starting to log into Facebook. It made me realize the number of “breaks” I take during the average day to consume Social Media. Once I began to eliminate that urge, I learned something: I am much much more productive when I don’t have Facebook as a distraction. As I re-enter the Facebook world, I am going to have to seriously discipline myself to only login a few times a day.
Week 2
This was when my need to Twitter really emerged. All of these little things kept happening that I wanted to tell the world about: the day I hiccuped for 8 hours straight, when one of my boys said, “Dad, do we HAVE to listen to rock music?”, when a flash flood almost washed away our tent when camping, etc. etc. etc. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to want to share this, I like the community it builds with people, it was just hard for me not to go there.
Week 3-4
These were vacation weeks for me so the temptation to blog, Facebook, and Twitter weren’t very strong except when I took pictures I really wanted to share.
Week 5
Last week was perhaps the hardest week because I was back from vacation and really trying to get things planned out for the fall. It felt like everything was “back to normal” except my social media stuff. I found myself craving normalcy.
Summary
This was a great thing for me in many ways and I think I may make a habit of doing this each July. Here were the best things about the month:
- My family vacation was truly that: a FAMILY vacation. I wasn’t consumed with having to share all the details with the world, and a lot of the time I would just leave my gadgets (including my phone) in the hotel room or van.
- I got a lot of reading done (which was one of my goals).
- The fast helped me to be less narcissistic. That’s one of the great downfalls about social media: we share every detail of our lives with other people and it makes is feel so dang important. It tends to place us in the center of the universe.
Anyhoo…tomorrow I am going to post a few thoughts on what happens next with me and Social Media.