Quitting social media, for quite some time :)
“Put your phone away to be connected.” – unknown
Hello there 👋 Yeah, I know it's been a while since I've been here. Well, if you are reading this, it means that I'm not dead! 🎉
I was checking when was the last time I posted something on social media, and it was 4 months ago. In the perspective of a year, it's one-third of the year ...
The funny thing is I've never realized I was off for that long time until I received a message on Facebook from a friend. He asked me if I was alright and the reason why I stopped posting so abruptly.
I was never the kind of person who posts one story per day or answers messages in minutes. I would say that 1 or 2 times per month I was sharing some pictures on my Instagram and Facebook.
So, what happened?
Well, I started to change some habits regarding how technology affects my life and the way I use my time. During this process, I knew that social media was something that was stealing time from my day-to-day.
It's not only posting some pictures and forgetting about it ... Your friends will react to it, therefore you will make open the application, and answer the comments.
This ends up creating a snowball effect of distraction. In which you are constantly unblocking and blocking your phone just to check if someone reacted to your post ... This is exactly the reason why I wanted to drop social media.
Most probably it's not the fault of these applications for causing this addiction in our life, or maybe yes 🤔 But the truth is that they are just applications, and we are the ones who decide which use we are giving to them ... So in the end, it's our fault to create this co-dependence.
“Use social as a tool, don't be used by social media.” – Kelly Martin
Did something change?
Actually, yes! I started working on projects that I've been holding for some time and had some new experienced on the way. In a nutshell:
- I started my journey into the world of Finance and Investment. It's funny because everybody knows that it's important, but no one teaches you that during your education ...
- I joined weekly sessions with my first Therapist, and they helped! I didn't have a good time during the first wave of Corona. I learned to open myself more, instead of letting my thoughts affect me.
- I met Yuliia, my girlfriend, and we've been dating now for around 3 months. Thanks to her this third wave of Corona was easier for me. I will share more about it soon 😄
- I started to read books in German, to be more precise: the Harry Potter collection! I've seen a huge boost in my general understanding of text and conversations. So far I'm finishing the third one, and next month I will start with “The Goblet of my Fire” (my favorite movie!), which is 767 pages 🤯
- I passed my probation period in my new company, which means that I'm officially employed (by the Berlin Immigration office). Therefore I finally started the process to get my Permanent Residence in Germany 🇩🇪
Quite some stuff right! It's funny, I used to check my posts on Social Media to remember what happened during a specific time of the year. Here instead, I had to sit and remember.
With this writing, I'm not trying to say “Oh look at how cool I am, and all the things I did” by any means. My goal is to share my opinion regarding social media and my experience of being outside the consumer side for some time.
Something that I can highlight, is the freedom feeling. I could break free from the habit of checking the phone just in case. When I'm with friends I normally leave it downside on a table and take it just for the pictures. Pictures that now I don't feel the need to share.
During this past year with the pandemic, so many things were happening (and not happening as well), which makes us live in automatic mode. Without realizing we spend our life's doing things that don't fill us.
I very nice documentary that triggered me to start with this change is called “The Social Dilemma”, you can find it in Netflix. It discusses the topic of addiction, and also talks about how the organizations are using our information to profit from it and influence us (super important as well!).
Well, I think that will be it for this post. In case I made you think on this topic, it would be very nice if you let me know your opinions by sending me a message. Most probably I won't answer on the same day 😅
Thanks for reading. Ema.