What I Did On My Social Media Sabbatical (Part Four) – My Relationship With Social Media
This is the fourth and final installment in my little blog series on the social media sabbatical I took in the month of August, 2013. I’ve already covered some of the things I accomplished in a month without online social distractions: I built an affiliate site marketing the best writing software programs, I ironed out many of the world building issues associated with my free fiction-by-subscription project Walk Like A Stranger: Passing Through Home, and I edited and packaged a new Sovereign Era short story by P. G. Holyfield.
I was very busy and, I think, a tad more productive than usual. At the same time, I found myself thinking — a lot — about what my relationship with social media was before the sabbatical, and what I wanted it to be when the month was over.
My Relationship With Social Media Was A Drag
Seriously. It’s the whole reason I needed a break.
I kept being disappointed by the casual extremism, if that’s even a phrase (it should be) demonstrated by so many people on every side of every issue. I want the people I know and am associated with, however loosely, to be more reasonable than, it seems, many of them actually are.
Being exposed to that over an over again on so many issues was exhausting, and depressing.
Interestingly, the month I was away from social media, a study from researchers at the Universities of Michigan and Leuven made the news by concluding that “rather than enhancing well-being… Facebook may undermine it.”
Read the study… it’s fascinating. And it resonated, with me, at least.
I have enough going on to undermine my well-being, thanks very much. I’m a struggling creator and a struggling freelancer. I’m the only local family member available to help my elderly, ailing mother. I own a house I can’t afford to sell. I’m forty six years old and have no health insurance. And so on and so forth.
While I’m not one of those people who thinks we should deny or reject experiencing the bad things that happen in our lives, I certainly don’t think it makes any sense to keep doing things that add to the negative column of one’s personal scorecard, y’know?
My Time Away Was Grounding
My deal with myself in August was that I would avoid social media (which for me meant, mostly, Facebook, Twitter, and, to a much lesser degree, Google Plus) except for the purposes of business or promotion. No “liking” assorted statuses, no “me too” comments, no “this is the song that was in my head when I woke up” tweets… you know.
I won’t deny that it was weird, at first. My old routine had been to review email, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn after my morning coffee and before I started working through my to-do list for the day. Because it was a routine, breaking away from it was at first odd at best and disconcerting at worst.
Mostly, though… it was freeing. I was free to get to work more quickly, free to ignore (be unaware of, actually) various stupid things going on… and, perhaps because I wasn’t filling my brain and my time with distracting, artificially meaningful crap, I had more bandwidth to think about things that actually are meaningful.
I figured out that social media can be a time suck when the things I might otherwise be doing suck in a different way… but need to be done. Turns out that I came to one of the conclusions of that study all on my own: that social media engagement can serve much the same purpose as other repetitive, distracting, addictive activities, and that none of it is all that healthy.
My Relationship With Social Media Going Forward
Turns out I came to enjoy opening Facebook and HootSuite
once a day, skimming quickly through stuff, and closing them again. Now that my social media sabbatical is over, I find I’m doing the mostly the same thing: opening the social media platforms two or three times a day. The difference is that I allow myself to comment / like / share / retweet / reply or whatever… but then I get out again.
It’s nice.
My Relationship With Social Media And My Relationships
Almost three years ago, I blogged the question, “does social media make you less social?”
I wonder about it still… and while I haven’t made any solid plans to act on my musing, I’m considering some kind of action that’s more deliberate… that requires contact that isn’t time-shifted and curated by a third party in Menlo Park, San Francisco, or Mountain View.
It’s easy to “keep up” with people and almost never actually spend time with them in the same space, even when you’re geographically close. I don’t think I like that… but I know I’m lazy, too, y’know? Like so many of us are, it seems.
How’s Your Relationship With Social Media?
How do you feel about your own relationship with social media? Have you ever taken a break like I did in August? Would you?
Share your thoughts and perspective on your relationship with social media… in the comments!
This is a post from Matthew Wayne Selznick. Thanks for reading What I Did On My Social Media Sabbatical (Part Four) – My Relationship With Social Media -- please click through and comment, and share with everyone you know!
