Time to Turn It Off

I read a post on The Art of Simple a few days back about a book that is about to come out called “Finding Spiritual Whitespace,” and it got me to thinking… I could use some more whitespace in my life.  I have so much that clamors for my attention all the time and it leaves me feeling sapped of mental and physical energy.  I read a lot of different things about having and doing less in order to live more, and I really love the idea of that.  However, sometimes it seems like there just really isn’t much more I can excise from my life.

Then it hit me: SOCIAL MEDIA. 

I don’t have any real beef with social media, in fact, I really enjoy social media and think it can do great things, but it does suck up a lot of my time. No, I don’t sit for hours scrolling, but I have found that even when I am not actively engaged with one platform or another, I am THINKING about it.  This is because I am a sucker for hot button issues so I am always running over my response, someone else’s response, pondering over the larger implications of the interaction, or just fuming about something stupid that was said even though I should have expected it.  I am also guilty of frequently checking to see if some of my snappier one-liners got the reaction I had hoped for… It’s a sickness, we all know that.

I have decided to run a little experiment.  I’m not the first person to do this, but I’m interested to see what happens.  I am going to take a break from social media.  I am going to commit to one month of un-involvement.  No Facebook. No Instagram. No Twitter. At first I thought, “I might miss something important,” but then I realized that having thoughts like that were a good indication that a Social Media Vacation is definitely a need.  I will still be blogging because blogging is an important outlet for me.  It does not make me feel “psychically cluttered” like all the others.  Maybe this vacation will give me more time for blogging?

This is perfect timing for such a vacation because my June calendar is almost completely empty.  We’ve got regular events: play group, church, a holiday, maybe a birthday or two, but that’s it.  There isn’t a single doctor’s visit or big event I have to plan for, and I can hardly believe it.  I want to spend some good, long, quality time just sitting in the yard feeling the summer breeze and listening to the birds sing.  Maybe I can get a kiddie pool and a lawn chair and cool my feet.  The possibilities are really endless.

So this Saturday night, I will delete Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter off of my iPhone, turn off live tiles on my tablet, and just enjoy some quiet. I’ll come back July 6, or maybe later, depending on how this goes 🙂

Borrowed from coulanges14.wordpress.com

Wanna join me?