10/31/23

Sometime in June of this year I decided to do something. Not for the first time, but this time for good.

Time is so so precious; wasting it goes against how it ought to be spent, and I was not using it well in some spaces.

With the changes I have been wanting and needing to make in my life, doing things the way I had been needed some adjustments. While considering how to change this for the better, I looked to my biggest time waster: social media use. 

I’ve had a Twitter profile since 2012, and Facebook since 2015, and Instagram sometime soon afterwards. In all that time, I’ve rarely posted compared to how much time I spent on those platforms.

It’s not like I have nothing to say; after all, I am a writer. It’s just that I didn’t want to participate in the reaction/having to comment on everything. There have been times where I absolutely did, and I recognized it and pulled back. 

For me, being a writer means acute observation comes as a second nature, and thus the world at large can drag me down if exposed to certain aspects too often, and better aspects less often.

I have deleted my social media apps from my phone a few times over the last few years, only to come back. My thinking was, if I always come back, maybe I should make it a better experience for myself, so I made lots of specific choices for my algorithm to be entertaining and enlightening versus infuriating and depressing. It took a while, but I succeeded to a large degree. 

But here’s the catch: ultimately, it didn’t matter at all. It was wonderful to not feel brought down by multiple variations of less than decent human behavior, but my time spent still felt like time wasted. Empty brain calories were consumed and I didn't feel any more enriched, and in June, I finally decided once and for all to not have my social media apps on my phone. 

I still wanted to keep my accounts, and access them on PC, but only do so very little. Thankfully, they aren’t as user friendly on desktop and I don’t feel like I’m about to get sucked in. To prevent this, I go to each platform with intention, to either check my notifications or research something, and no more.

Now that it’s been over four months, I can happily report that my quality of life has improved as a result. I still spend a decent amount of time on my phone, but it’s reading articles about a variety of things. I still enjoy journalism covering pro wrestling and the music industry, and ebooks on my Kindle. Now I also go to sites like the Guardian and the Atlantic for more news and commentary about the rest of the world instead of how I was previously limiting myself.

Now that it’s football season I consume some of that coverage, but way less than I used to. I have also expanded my podcast consumption to more storytelling shows in addition to the news and conversational podcasts I enjoy. I resubscribed to Netflix and have enjoyed catching up on what I have been missing in addition to the new stuff that they have been releasing. And that’s just the phone and TV stuff, I still prefer physical books, but sometimes ebooks offer more convenience.

Another change I’ve made is to have extended periods of silence each day, which has not always been easy to do, but it’s been a great balance to all of this. It has helped cut down on screen time, and allowed my brain to roam freely. Doing so, and learning more and more about when to sit still and unpack something has been helping me gain more and more trust and confidence with myself that I can and will always steer myself back to where I can be at my best.

All in all, very minimal and intentional social media not on my phone has helped make my life better. My brain is having less junk food and more dense and healthier food, so to speak, which in turn has finally made me feel like I am making progress in my life towards what really matters. I still can access crappy things and have to ward that off too by continuing to understand what is and is not healthy, which is a lifelong ambition in every space. Doing this with social media is just one domino in a line of many that I need to line up as best I can to set myself up for success.

The quality of my mental environment has led to better quality of thoughts. My physical environment has been a good thing for me for a while, especially since I made the move to doing Instacart almost three years ago. At home it’s quite bare, in things around me and that I have, which mixes well with limited social media use.

There is now less brain clutter and more space for density, and more discipline and better flows to my day. This all has allowed me to really begin the process of truly nailing down discipline in ways I never have been able to before.  

I am not close to where I want to be, but this is the best start I have given myself. What I have to live for is too important not to make these changes, and life is quite short to begin with.

It’s all been in service to foster and not stifle my creativity and be the best person for myself and my community.

None of this would be possible without this community. The radical and reciprocal support and accountability has been tremendous for us all, and all of us humans need it. I am super fortunate to have these people, and did not realized how deprived I was of what they offered until it was a reality in my life. And that has also been echoed back to me.