I took a break from social media, and all I got was a backache

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My job gives me a day off every third Friday, and last week was my three-day weekend. I didn’t have any specific plans (I rarely do), but by the time I hit Thursday, I had no interest in doing anything besides staying in, locking down, cuddling my cat and watching TV. It was one of those exhausting weeks where everything seemed to come together to suck away at my energy: a horrendous news cycle creeping in from south of the border, a work week with considerably more metaphorical fires to put out than usual, and renewed cases of writer’s block and non-sociability. After every work day, I also found that I dreaded the long and crowded bus rides home, but never felt like sticking around downtown or going anywhere else either. I could feel I needed a few days to reset my brain.

The productivity app on my phone stayed on all weekend; I knew if I didn’t do this, I was going to waste the whole three days scrolling through my feeds (I wrote about this already). I left the apartment to do errands and satisfy my periodic craving for Swiss Chalet, but stayed clear from downtown (too many people there between Hal-Con and the start of the local hockey team’s home season). I did my laundry, minimized my exposure to the news, watched a few DVDs and Netflix (for the first time in a while), and generally used those three days to take advantage of the fact that I didn’t have to be anywhere or see anyone until 8 am on Monday morning.

It was a necessary bit of self-care (though sitting on my couch for too long ended up triggering some back issues that Sunday night), and it confirmed that I honestly don’t need or want to spend as much time on social media anymore. I’m not giving it up, but I won’t use it after 9 pm, and I want to be putting more energy into the blog this month anyway.

On that last point, I’m doing something called NaBloPoMo this year; it’s like NaNoWriMo except that instead of writing a novel in a month, you publish a new blog post every day in November. Elan “Schmutzie” Morgan’s been doing it for years, and when I saw she was doing it again, I figured it would be a good challenge for the coming month. I’m debating whether to count my upcoming SNL-related posts on the other blog as part of this project or to only include content on the personal blog; I’m also on the fence about promoting each post on social media. I at least will post something every day, and plan to use Thursdays as my “major post” day here (Saturdays are my designated SNL post publish days…maybe that’s a little too on-the-nose but makes sense).

I keep thinking I need to tie this into other challenges, like making myself meet with a friend for coffee or beer every so often, or getting back to the weekly “cafe writing” that I did in the spring and summer, but right now I don’t really have any grand plans beyond sharing something new here every day for the next four weeks and two days. I hope you’ll check it out.

I am publishing a post every day in November for NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month).