My Christmas Break has been pretty uneventful, at least compared to some. This is not a problem. I quite like having time to relax or "waste" however I please, but often I've seen friends on Snapchat or Instagram (pick any platform basically) sharing their exciting adventures abroad: the reunions which I could not be a part of, the weekend road trips to fun cities, so on and so on, and I begin to feel negatively towards my own position in life. My uneventful break becomes a problem, as I actually waste my time focusing on where I'm not and what I wish I were doing. This is nothing new. I have found myself in this mindset plenty of times before, choosing to suffer and wish for lives that weren't mine. This time, however, would be different. I started off my new year with a cleanse, a social media cleanse. For seven days I gave it up, and this is the account of those seven days:
Day One:
I removed all social media apps from my phone. With the rapid clicks of tiny X’s, gone were Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. Later in the day I realized I probably could have left them installed and just logged out, however, I didn’t trust my willpower to actually stay logged out. Honestly, I didn’t fully realize they were gone until midday, when I was bored and wanted to fill my time. I was searching for Instagram when I realized, "Oh yeah, I deleted that…"
Day Two:
I will not lie, I slept until 2 p.m. I woke up to a dead phone, whose battery must have died overnight due to my failure to charge it. After some thought, I didn’t see any reason to charge it for the day. So there it was, hidden under some pillows, dead for the remainder of the second day as I watched Netflix on my computer.
Day Three:
Once again, I slept until mid-afternoon. My phone was still dead, and many hours later, I decided it was time to charge it solely for the purpose of an alarm. I read for the majority of the third day, at least for the time that wasn’t spent sleeping. I watched a few episodes of my current Netflix fix, and only twice did I have to suppress the urge to check my Twitter.
Day Four:
I woke up “early” (10:30 a.m.), got ready for the day, and read some more. The morning was peaceful, and I enjoyed my quiet time. I did laundry, cleaned my room halfway before I got lazy, watched more Netflix, and spent the evening watching my mom as she taught me how to cook. I stayed up until the early hours of the morning reading even more until I fell asleep.
Day Five:
I woke up at noon without an alarm. Not too bad compared to 2 p.m.! I finished the book I had started and proceeded to watch the movie adaptation. The rest of the day was a blur. I remember spending a lot of time thinking about love, life, college, and careers. I guess I become even more reflective in the absence of social media, and I didn’t fall asleep until 2 a.m.
Day Six:
My dad made sure I was up before noon because my family was planning on venturing out for the day. We ate lunch downtown, and as we were getting back into the car to drive to an art museum, I realized that I actually spent my time conversing and laughing with my family, compared to absorbing myself in my phone. At the art museum, I had to settle for the fact that I wouldn’t be able to share my experience on Snapchat or Instagram, and I was thankful. I walked into an Andy Warhol exhibit and stood inches from iconic screen prints of Marilyn Monroe, Liza Minnelli, and Mao Zedong, able to take everything in as it was. I braced the cold 20-degree weather to walk through gardens, taking pictures I soon realized I wouldn’t share at that moment, and ended up putting my phone away to enjoy life: freezing, raw, natural, and more beautiful than any blue light emitted from a screen. I ended my night by going to see "The Revenant" and started another book before I fell asleep.
Day Seven:
No surprise, I slept late again. I woke up and made myself some lunch, cleaned the other half of my room, read, and helped my sister with a photography project for school. After a nice, slow seventh day, I’m writing this article wondering if I’ll add back all the apps I deleted from my phone. I have yet to decide, but it's not bothering me too much.
Whether or not I choose to prolong my cleanse, I have recognized my ability to be present without social media. Yes, the amount of sleeping I did took away time I could have used to be productive, but it did not take away the time I spent awake and being productive during that time. My eyes were not constantly looking at a screen; I found alternative ways to deal with boredom, and my thoughts were not concerned with what others were doing with their break compared to what I was doing with mine. Social media is not my life. I do not want to live for social media, nor for the number of likes or retweets I get. Time doesn't stop when my face is absorbed with what's on a screen, it just passes by. I need to remember this. I need to remember to live.
