two weeks without social media? - part 1.

I have been thinking about this for several weeks, since I first read this article from Mashable, which I no doubt came across in my Twitter feed. While reading about these folks who willfully disconnected for two weeks, I found myself thinking, "Wow, that would be really nice," while I was simultaneously horrified at the idea of being/feeling so disconnected for two weeks. In our age of compressed time, two weeks feels like an eternity.


A trip to the grocery store on Sunday afternoon confirmed my need for this hiatus. While I was gone, my husband needed to use my iPhone (he calls it my "super phone") to access a web-based tutorial, in order to do some work on one of our vehicles. He gave me his phone, should I need it for anything like, say, making a phone call. I wrote out my short grocery list with pen on notebook paper and headed out to the store. There were many moments where I felt compelled to check my piece of paper against information located within my web of social media: a recipe I'd saved to Pinterest or a basic Google search to confirm how many ounces of shredded cheese are in a cup, or...the list goes on.  I even went to two different grocery stores and I couldn't check-in to either of them on Foursquare. That's two points lost, never to be recovered. :P His phone was too so simple, that I couldn't figure out how to lock it, after I used it to make a phone call. I had to wait a few minutes for it to lock itself.


I may in fact be an iPhone user for life. I've heard once you cross over, it's hard to "go back" to using anything else. This sadly might be true for me. The time spent without my phone, makes me think that if my life were a TV sitcom/dramedy, my iPhone, with its handheld window into an abundance of social media, might actually be an unspoken "character,"in my narrative, similar to the way that "the city" is a character in Sex in the City. This is clearly not good.


While social media (specifically Twitter and Facebook) help me to stay connected with those in my life, and those with whom I enjoy engaging in conversation around ministry-centric issues, it is clear that social media consumes many aspects of my life. Not only am I constantly multi-tasking with it, I'm finding it hard to concentrate long enough to read anything longer than 500 words. Anything. Books for class. Books for fun. This great, courageous, and important article from Desmond Tutu. Plus, in the face of end of the semester deadlines, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest undoubtedly become the Trifecta of Procrastination and All Things Timesuck. The end of the semester is near. I don't have that much to do to finish, but I already feel myself getting sucked into this Trifecta.


I will still use my phone, just not those apps pertaining to social media. I'll still text and e-mail and make phone calls. I'm just turning down the noise a bit. I plan to blog honestly about my experience. While blogs clearly fall into the category of social media, no one can accuse me of using this thing too much. I think any attempt at blogging has suffered at the prevalence of other social media in my life. I'd like for writing about things that matter to me, those which I can discuss with others, to be a creative discipline, one that I engage with some regularity. Maybe this time of disconnection will allow me to cultivate such a mentality and a discipline, as I reconnect with my soul.


Please see my part two of this post, wherein I list what else I hope these two weeks will bring. Assuming I can make it.