Curious if others on the board disconnect from everything sometimes, just for a break.
I went camping Mon thru Wed and was intentionally away from all media – everything was powered off including my phone. It’s surprising how relaxing it is to get away from the clickbait jackals and carnival barkers for a while. For a few days, it was impossible for anyone to contact me without traveling to my location and hollering out my name.
I spent the time quietly going about simple tasks (cooking, etc.). I realized when driving back that I had, quite literally, not thought about the virus or elections or any of the stress-inducing topics of today. It was just me, woods, and a few books.
Anyone else occasionally do a complete disconnect? It’s amazing how quiet and enjoyable it is without our electronic leashes.
Never a full one. I have begun to set limits, I noticed too often that I was spending so much time online that I wasn’t making time for other things. That might have been ok early on in lockdown, but I can’t spend all day online and then finally motivate myself to get outside for exercise and have it start storming second I put my shoes on.
The format change of the board has helped. For some reason, the new format isn’t as addicting. Also, I’ve just just about completely eliminated all the time I spent on travel forums. Nothing but shaming and people going full Karen over not getting refunds from closed hotels.
When we cruise (who knows when that will resume) we don’t bother with the internet package, so apart from the ship’s TV, we’re pretty much disconnected. I think it bothers my husband more than me because he hates missing work emails. I miss it a little, but I don’t get tremors or night sweats.
I’ve never felt the need for a complete disconnect – I live alone, am not much of an outdoors type during the summer, and enjoy lots of online stuff – but I did walk away from Facebook about 72 hours ago.
I never thought I would, because I’ve been a pretty big FB fan ever since I joined in '08. But I was thinking about calling someone out on some hypocritical behavior – I’d started tentatively drafting a post – when suddenly I realized that I was actually done. Done seeing “I BET YOU WON’T SHARE THIS FLAG BECAUSE IT OFFENDS PEOPLE” posts, done seeing old friends post pictures from their Florida vacations and pool parties and BBQs with no masks on and with faces pressed up against each other, done with people who can’t seem to stop trying to out-cool everyone, done with people who can’t tell a statue from a history book, done with people who would rather let racially charged misinformation stand than admit they made a mistake…just, done. I was getting way too worked up, way too often.* I didn’t delete my profile, because there’s a fair chance I’ll want to return someday, but I’ve deleted all of the FB links/apps from my various devices.
I tried Twitter a few years ago but didn’t care for it, so now my only social media presences are on LinkedIn and Instagram. Previouly I was a casual IG user at best, but I’ve discovered that almost all of the people/groups I might miss on FB also have IG accounts – and I learned how to set up a second account that I can easily switch between on the mobile app, so now I happily use my main account for friends and I have the other (“jennyfollowsstrangers”) for following public figures/groups.
Sorry, I got a little off-topic! Writing all of that was kind of cathartic; I hope no one minds too much.
*I avoid that issue here by never going into Great Debates!
