I’m not the kind of lady to shame anyone. I’ve read the Hands Free Mama’s “How to Miss a Childhood” post and then the “Dear Mom with the iPhone” post by Fried Okra. And really, I don’t know that what ills our society today is much more threatening than what afflicted our society 50 years ago. It’s just different.
My social media breaks don’t have as much to do with engaging with my kids (because I think I do an alright job in the tension of social media + “momming” as it is) as it does with quieting my own mind.
See, social media moves lightening fast, and I hold on to information like a sponge. It feels like my brain tries to keep every bit of detail I’ve ever learned in the forefront of my mind. I couldn’t figure out why I was feeling frantic all of the time it.
I started to feel like I had no original thoughts left. When it came time to write, I couldn’t eek out more than 300 words at a time–and 300 words isn’t enough to flesh out much of anything. I wasn’t reading. I wasn’t writing. I wasn’t taking pictures. I wasn’t creating much of anything.
Then, it hit me. I was consuming like a child who’d been deprived. Thing was, a lady can’t feast all the time and not feel the extra weight eventually.
And, I was feeling heavy.
So, now, every weekend–I take time to fast from social media. It’s not time to pay more attention to my kids, because my attention to my sweet boys is not lacking. But, it is time to live life a little slower. Writing in more than 140 character soundbites. Thinking in more than 300 word chunks.
The internet is a really beautiful thing. I feel like everywhere I look online there are women I want to huddle in close and have a real conversation with. I want to hear their hopes and dreams and exciting things.
But generally, those things don’t happen by just trolling Twitter mindlessly, which can be the habit I fall into with my iPhone. Someone referred to it as the Bermuda Triangle of smartphones (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook), switching between the three whenever you’re bored.
That is what I’m against in my own life. That mindless consumption is not good for my soul. It makes me lazy, and weary, and heavy, and thoughtless.
When I’m bored, I want to be thinking of bigger things. I want my imagination to be pushed to something I don’t see in my own reality. When there is so much beauty to be had at my fingertips–just a glass screen separating–I don’t often chase down bigger ideas than what so-and-so had for breakfast. I can just thumb through and then sit on the sidelines, watching someone else’s highlight reel.
Instead of catching up on the highlight reel, I need to be doing stretches and heavy lifting of my own. So, I take two days per week to really and truly step away so that I can be all there.
You can join me on Analog Weekend. If you want to be official and all…you can grab the graphic I put up on Friday afternoons and use the hashtag #AnalogWeekend.