First off, I read the article wrong. It said, "from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday." I started at midnight Friday night and went to midnight the next night. Oops!
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| A screen shot of my phone. |
On Saturday, I woke up around 6:00am and immediately turned my phone on. My "routine" is to check Twitter for the headlines even when I'm still laying in bed! I almost hit my Twitter app and then remembered that I couldn't do social media. For a second I thought, "But how am I supposed to know what's going on in the world?!" Panic. But then I realized that I have the ABC app, the CNN app, and the WCPO (local ABC) app. So my headlines were saved!
My fiancé and I went to Louisville for the day to meet with our wedding ceremony officiant, as well as celebrate my dad's birthday and my fiancé's little brother's birthday. On the two hour car ride there, I kept getting Words with Friends notifications and couldn't play! My fiancé and I actually talked the whole way there instead of our usual car ride protocol: Josh listening to Pandora while I mess around on my phone. It was nice!
After we talked with our officiant, I was desperate to tweet about our ceremony plans! I was so excited and wanted to share it with everyone! But I didn't.
We celebrated with my family and then drove to Josh's family's house. On that 30 minute drive, I can't tell you how many times I reached for my phone to check Twitter or Facebook. I kept stopping myself, but it started making me realize just how addicted I am to social media.
On the way home we hit traffic. The last 10 miles on the interstate before we got to our exit took us 50 minutes. This is where the mistake of "sundown to sundown" came back to bite me. It was 8:30pm and dark; I was thinking how great it would be if I could get on Twitter to see what was going on with the traffic. Turns out that I could have checked!
Sunday morning when I woke up I realized I'd had a dream about not being able to tweet. I had 27 new notifications on my social media networks.
But now I have a bit of a conundrum: I don't have a job, so I'm doing a lot of online stuff to try to make money: blogging, Etsy, and writing articles. But when I'm anxious to the point of having nightmares about not having my phone with me so I can tweet...I think something is wrong.
I grew up without TV until I was 16. I didn't have a cell phone until my senior year of high school. How is it that someone who grew up knowing only the "little things" in life that you have when you don't have a screen in front of your face, be so addicted only eight years later?
How do you build your online presence to the point of being successful without becoming addicted?
This is something I am definitely going to explore. I feel like a lot of people must have felt this way on Saturday. Yes, I'm committed to building my online presence, but I really enjoyed getting to spend time with my family without having my phone glued to my hand. There has to be a happy medium, and I'm going to find it.
I have no intention of living every moment of my life with a phone in my hand, but I have every intention of being incredibly successful.
Did you take part in the National Day of Unplugging? What's your story?
"Be the change you wish to see in the world." --Gandhi
This is exactly how I am. I have problems getting the phone out of my hand. When I wake up in the morning I always check Facebook first- normally nothing fantastic happened- but I still need to check it. However, recently I have seen more and more people post about information on how to become ordained. That's how I actually came across your post. Thanks so much for this post, I really enjoyed reading it.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much!
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