“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Annie Dillard
“Put good sentences in your ears.” Jane Kenyon
“Garbage in, garbage out.” Pop Culture
When I decided to adopt the concept of healing as a focus for the year 2021, I realized it would mean adding some healthier practices to my life, practices like meditation, which you can read about in this post. I knew it would also mean eliminating others, changing long-standing habits that had become nothing more than ways of numbing myself to the realities of life I didn’t want to deal with.
One of those was my obsession with social media. Specifically, my obsession with Facebook.
Time for True Confessions, friends.
I created my Facebook account back in 2007, and used it only sporadically for several years. In those days, my online friends were confined to the group of writers I had met through my blog and various online writing communities. I was determined to keep my “writing self” hidden from my “real self.” At that time, my writing practice was a closely held secret from everyone I knew IRL.
But then Facebook began gaining popularity, while more and more of the people I knew were becoming my “friends” online as well as in real life. I had just published my first book, and so suddenly I was “outed” as writer to all the people who only knew me as a wife, mother, daughter, friend, church member, office colleague, fellow musician.
Friend requests kept coming in, often from folks I hadn’t heard of or seen in years. It was such fun to see what everyone was up to, fun to share photos and recipes, to see their children and grandchildren and where they went on vacation.
It was all lighthearted fun and games.
Until it wasn’t.
Because while I was “having fun” connecting with people from every corner of my life over the past six decades, my brain was laying down new neuro-pathways and becoming addicted to the hits of dopamine each thumbs-up and notification pinged into my system.
And then came November 2016, the election to end all elections (or so it seemed at the time.)
I was inundated with post after post that fueled my own anger, shock, rage, fear. I was drawn to it like some people are drawn to horror movies. Scrolling through my news feed was the first thing I did when I got up, and the last thing I did at night, as well as a myriad of times during the day. Standing in line at the grocery store, waiting in the doctor’s office, while eating in a restaurant, and God help me, even sitting at traffic lights (when I was the driver!)
It took me a while, but I finally realized how detrimental this was to my mental and creative health – not to mention my physical health, because much of this angry scrolling was done with a glass of chardonnay in my hand.
It isn’t as if I didn’t see the problem with this. I realized that as soon as I opened that app my focus, concentration, and mood was lost, as well as hours and hours of precious time down the rabbit hole of social media. I would periodically delete the app from my phone and that slowed me down for a while. But then I’d find a reason to put it back…I was monitoring the marketing posts for the community theatre I worked with. Or I was waiting to see videos of my grandson’s piano recital. Soon I had fallen back into the same old habits again.
It wasn’t until I began meditating as a regular daily practice that I deeply realized the detrimental nature of my Facebook habit. Meditation itself was less satisfying when I’d spent the time before getting worked up over the latest news about politics or the pandemic. And five minutes of doom scrolling was all it took to erase the lovely peaceful aura I often felt after meditation. If “how we spend our days is how we spend our lives,” I realized I didn’t want my life – especially this stage of it! – filled with the mental garbage that so often populates social media. As a writer, I want “good sentences” in my ears and my mind - the kind that inform, enlighten, and inspire.
As I’ve learned through motherhood (of both human and animal species!) behavior training is best accomplished in small, manageable stages. I began by training myself to stay off social media until after I finished my meditation practice– which, in the scheme of my already deeply committed morning routine, meant staying off the internet until after I’d had two cups of coffee, read for a while, done morning notebook pages, gotten dressed, and walked the dog. I quickly learned to love those quiet morning hours undisturbed by anything from the outside world. How calming! How refreshing! I enjoyed it so much, it wasn’t hard to train myself to stay off the internet until lunch. I’m finding now that even at lunchtime when it’s “legal” to log on, I really don’t want to. I want to stay in that bubble of quiet and peace.
It’s a mental and emotional relief to have some freedom from the agitation of social media for the past six months. I’m learning to crave that feeling as much as I once craved the dopamine rush of a friend request or a “like” on my latest post.
I’m not planning on deleting my Facebook account. I still enjoy many of the social aspects of this platform. But like anything, moderation is the key. Sometimes you really can have too much of a good thing.
I realize not everyone can have the luxury of internet free mornings. I’m grateful that work or other aspects of life don’t force me to have an online presence during the day. But even if you can’t take extended periods of time away from the internet during the day, perhaps you can set aside a couple of hours before you go to bed to power down your digital screens. Or take a weekend day and go internet free for the morning. See how it feels to wake up and fully savor your own world before you let the outside one come barging in.
You might decide that’s the way you want to spend your days…and your life.