What Happens When the Internet Ceases to Hear About Your Life for One Week

It seems like a long time ago now that I posted about giving up posting on social media for a week.

(Duh Arielle, that's because it WAS a long time ago)

One of my lovely readers asked me for an update as to how this went, and this made me inexplicably happy because I love that even though hardly anyone reads this blog, my readers like to call me out when I do shit like forget to follow up on things.

So, I was supposed to give up tweeting, Facebook status-updating, and all that jazz from Sunday December 23rd through Saturday December 29th. And full disclosure, I completely forgot about it for the first day.

OOPS.

The only thing I ended up posting on Facebook during the time I forgot that I wasn't supposed to be posting on Facebook were some googly pictures, which thankfully do not represent an up-to-the-minute, "oh my god this is happening RIGHT NOW and I need to tell the world about it RIGHT NOW" kind of update.

Full disclosure part 2 - on Christmas day my roommates and I were walking around wearing reindeer headbands, and I posted a picture of us on Facebook knowing full well that I had promised myself that I wouldn't do such things. But the thing is, REINDEER HEADBANDS. So I made an exception.

So you're probably thinking, "well, you failed at this challenge, you suck." And maybe you're right. But really, I did still manage to learn a lot from it. It was kind of amazing to realize how often I thought about tweeting or posting something and how often I had to give myself a mental slap on the wrist to prevent myself from doing it. Out of all the things I wanted to post, I remember exactly zero of them. Which means they were clearly of the utmost importance and all my Twitter followers and Facebook friends are missing out on these tidbits of sheer brilliance.

Right.

I think one of the most important takeaways of this whole thing though is that my life really wasn't different at all during that week. I didn't do anything I wouldn't ordinarily have done, and I didn't even feel that weird about not being allowed to share my thoughts with the internet. The thoughts just kind of came and went, much like how they used to before social media made us want to share ALL THE FUCKING TIME. So it's a little comforting knowing that should the internet explode one day, I'll be okay.

That being said, I've gone right back to my semi-frequent social media life updates, and even today Facebooked and Tweeted more than normal (in my defense, I booked a trip to London today AND dyed my hair red, so it was a big day in my life).

One day I should take on a real challenge, which would be no reading of social media for a week, instead of just no posting. But I'm not ready for that yet. And probably will not ever be ready for that. Too scary.