six months and nine days without social media*
*installed on my devices and in a doomscroll-y way
sigh. i wish i could say this was a pure streak, where i haven't folded at all. and it's not like the times where i was on social media despite saying i've sworn off of it lasted for longer than five minutes each. but that doesn't equate to never. it's still good though! that's half a year.
youtube is what got me into cleansing this practice from my life in the first place. the bajillion (alright, maybe like, twelve max before i realized this topic was saturated enough and didn't want my algorithm to be all about it) youtubers who've been on this shit for a varying amount of time, from one week to three whole years. i was so jealous! i myself had been chronically online for fifteen years at that point, i was sick of the time and youth i was constantly losing to seeing and hearing things completely against my will, upset that my health was deteriorating on all fronts over something that could totally be helped, even if an addiction is still an addiction.
so, things i've been able to come back to since this executive decision:
- reading back to back. i'm 18 books ahead of my (what i initially thought was already huge) 10-book goal, and the majority of them have been physical which makes all the difference to me and my enjoyment
- art projects, such as embroidery for the first time ever and this diy kit that one of my best friends got me for my birthday this year
- walking just because i can, when pmdd isn't kicking my ass
- cooking! even when i don't have many ingredients, i surprise myself with what i can come up with by experimentation alone
- being much more present in phone calls and conversations, but also increasingly aware of when others aren't :/
............unfortunately this list is not long because i'm also in school, which takes up the bulk of my energy. but again, six months is at least a scratch in what i hope will be fifteen years without rotting on giant internet.1 and though i understand it to be possible to swear off social media entirely If You Just Believe, i've used it a little but only for the occasional style inspiration and archiving pretty and ugly and plain things alike. if i'm in the comments section for anything, it's youtube and reddit for things absolutely relevant to the questions or topics i've searched. i don't linger in these spaces any longer than i have to.
now, that's not to say i'm offline. i am very much on the computer or my phone almost every day even when i'm not doing homework. but i think there's an unspoken understanding that when you criticize somebody for being super online, you really mean that they're up other people's asses on x or instagram or tiktok or whatever. so when i say i'm offline to anyone who asks, i mean it in that same unspoken way where i'm not part of *vague hand gestures* that. i don't want to be accessible, nor perceptive of how accessible i am and severely overlooked regardless. i like it here on bear because i don't have to know who's specifically looking at what. i have the option to turn that shit off. and i don't have to worry about what i'm doing wrong or right either because it's so frickin' minimalist and freeform. but more than a lot of everything else, i fucking love talking and looking back on what i've said, even if future me doesn't agree with it. i think i convey things well enough sometimes (via text anyway). and then outside of myself, i have an insatiable need to learn things i actually want to know about. i don't know why i haven't seriously gotten into coding yet, but that's another thing i have time for now. i spent all of yesterday looking at different css commands on top of setting up this blog and transferring misplaced substack posts here. i guess that's still pretty self-involved, saying it out loud, but it wouldn't have been like that at all if i were still slave to my old vices.
after i finish my assignments for the week this evening, i might play overwatch 2 by myself for three hours straight. that's perfectly fine with me. being alone is okay when you know you're doing exactly what you signed up for. you don't sign up for social media to be lonely, not really, so good fucking riddance. if not, i'll text the friend whose birthday i quit social media on (4/16 🩵) for just as long.2
as opposed to tiny internet↩
i did neither of these LOL! however i did call another friend and talked about insurance and assurance. i am desperate to not have this conversation again↩