Digi Detox
Hey old pals. It’s been too long. I’ve been a busy motherfucker lately. And I’ve also been setting tumblr aside, along with insta, pinterest, twitter (although- let’s be real, that one is more dead than festival kimonos), and as much technology as possible. Unfortunately in this situation, my work requires a lot of screen time. I love my job, but selling real estate is a classic emailing/texting/more freakin emails all day kind of thing. So when trying to reduce my technology intake I can’t completely go cold turkey. But that just means I need to be extra strong in my personal time. I think a good detox is amazing. I will detox from anything. Sugars, alcohol, and in this case, technology. A Detox is great for your body, mind, and especially your soul because it’s a simple way to declutter your life. Our vices are a constant buzzing going on in our heads. If you’re used to intaking 150 calories of added sugars per day, your body comes to expect that bowl of sweet artificial cereal. It pesters you like a software update for the sugar all day and distracts you from living your life. This simple idea carries over into whatever your bod is used to having that isn’t helping it grow or keeping it fueled in a healthy way. Enter social media (and all screen time). I truly feel that I am addicted to it. I spend hours editing pictures that never see the light of gram. My thumb is more toned than I am because I probably scroll several miles a day. I even had alarms set to watch my snap stories so they wouldn’t get too backed up throughout the day. Shudder. Addiction is a gross thing for your soul and it’s toxic. And it’s true that you don’t even see your addiction wrapping it’s filthy little salad fingers around you until you’ve already fallen deep in its bowels. So lately I’ve been taking the idea of tech detoxes very seriously. It’s not something that can happen over night, but I recently worked my way up to two and a half days sober of the stuff. It felt so freeing. I finished a book. I rode a bike past a river and changing leaves in a cable knit. It was beautiful and 100% the kind of thing that would normally find its way into my feed, but I resisted the hanging fruit. I made a point to capture the moment with polaroids instead. Non instagrammable. Just for me. It sounds dumb, but it really was tough to fight the urge to snap an hd shot and play with the brightness and fade, but that just shows how my brain has been fucked with. Since this was my longest attempt at off the grid living to date, I want to share that I did have an over all feeling of light anxiety throughout. My presumption is that the more and longer you ween yourself off, the easier it gets, and the more the fomo fades away. I can only hope. I highly, highly recommend giving it a try. Although it was slightly anxiety inducing, it really is a more free and spirited way of living. My mind had always been distracted by what was going on in the snap world and unable to fully place focus on the action in my center stage. When you remove the option to scroll, you see your own reality in a clearer way. I will continue to experiment with longer black outs and i’m thinking once a week. Like a pallet cleanser. I’m set to do a four day health and wellness detox retreat on Nantucket next weekend which is incredibly invigorating and exciting. Although the detox is not focused on technology I’m going to add it to the list as a test and, of c, I will keep the tumblr squad up to date.