When American author John Green said he would be taking what he called a social media hiatus, I thought it was funny; not because I think people shouldn’t take time off social media and it’s a dumb idea, but because John Green is obsessed with Twitter. I’m serious, you can’t get that guy off it. And not only that, his tweets are well thought out, funny and poignant.

I guess that’s what happens when you’re a New York Times Best-selling author.

But, realizing I wouldn’t get to see his Twitter posts or amazing Facebook statuses anymore made me sad. Ultimately I realized it would be good for him. He’s been trying to write a new book for a long time, but he has been having a hard time.

That was the moment I looked at myself. I’m 19, I’ve written six novels, but the last one which I have been rewriting, I just haven’t gotten around to completing. I haven’t felt inspired to keep at it for a while now. And then I looked at myself.

Have I been spending too much time on social media? Is that why I’m not writing? Is it because the second I get back to the dorms from work and class and sit back down in front of a computer, the last thing I want to do is try to come up with some amazing, ineffable sentence that will be quotes on starry backgrounds in all of its tumblr glory, when I could easily just waste half an hour scrolling through Facebook.

I would trick myself. I would tell myself that looking at photographs on Instagram would be inspiring. Facebook friends and posts from authors would help me get started. Because that’s really all I needed.

And I looked at myself. And I looked at John Green. And for the first time in my life, I noticed a similarity between myself and this man I revere so much.

We both are people who want to create something, but get sucked into the endless torrent that are the tweets, instagram posts, and tumblings of people we may know, don’t know and do know. So, I took a page out of his book.

I decided to go off social media.

I deleted all the apps from my phone and iPod, and I told my friends that I would be taking time off. I told them it was because of the superficial nature of all the people that were posting things. This doesn’t mean that it was the posts from my friends, but from pages I’ve liked and the people I follow.

Then, there was this thought in the back of my head, a quote from an article I read a while ago. Facebook makes people depressed.

Depression decreases creative tendencies.

I had an equation, and a possible solution to my problem. The X variable was discovered, but the math still had to be worked out.

The first day was hard. When my alarm woke me up at 7:20 in the morning, and I reached to slide it off, I immediately went to open the Instagram app, my daily ritual. When I didn’t see it, I realized what I had promised myself. So, instead of spending a couple extra minutes just lying in bed, I got up.

That was the first change.

I wish I could say this decision has been an extremely eye-opening one; that I kept the apps off my phone and I learned so much and I will be forever changed... but, that’s not true.

Actually, I’m looking forward to downloading them again. I miss it.

But, I did start a new book.

Instead of spending time scrolling through Facebook when I got back from work, I read, or listened to an audio book. I spent more time talking to my roommate. I stopped looking at my phone so much.

Most importantly, though there are a lot of people that I contact through Facebook, I have amazing friends that are right in front of me. I knew that before, but realizing the strength of the friendships immediately around you is crucial, especially when you’re in college.

Since I wasn’t checking Facebook, I wasn’t getting notifications about which events my friends were going to. I stopped judging myself for not going to these events too. I realized that I like staying home sometimes, playing 2048 on my phone, and listening to a good book.

And, maybe, one of my favorite things that I’ve learned from this experience is now I know I don’t need to know what fun things my friends are doing, I do want to do more things like that. I do want to get out more, and now I am 100 percent sure that I want to do these things because I want to, not because it seems to be the socially correct thing to do.

On Sunday night, I’ll be downloading my apps again. I can’t promise that I won’t check Facebook as often as I did before. I can’t promise I won’t check Instagram as often, but I can promise that I won’t care so much about the seemingly nonexistent implications. Now I know what it’s like to not need my phone everywhere I go. I disconnected myself to reconnect.

And, if you’re a writer who's stuck, if you’re a painter who just can’t paint, or you’re just feeling lost, try doing this maybe for three days or a week. See if it actually does make a difference.

Even though the first day was hard, the second one was easier, and the third even more so, until the fourth when I didn’t even think about it. I still got to hear funny stories that happened within my friend group, because my friends told me in person, and that exchange is worth so much more than reading it on a computer screen.