Maybe it's an Instagram addiction

(and other things I'm learning)

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Hello there! I hope that you survived daylight saving’s time this weekend. In case you live under a rock (or in Arizona) and missed it: this weekend was the bad one, when you lose an hour of sleep to gain an hour of daylight.

Hurray! We did just fine, although we stayed up late Saturday night watching the World Baseball Classic (like baseball Olympics), and had to get up early to serve on hospitality at church. The weather has been gray and cold and kind of intensely sleepy. Thus, I’ve done little else besides change the sheets on our bed, finish a stellar novel (Pachinko by Min Jin Lee), and start another book about ecology and conservation. Oh, and I also made a killer pan of brownies to cheer Andrew up after his cataclysmic work week. Let me know if you absolutely need the recipe - it’s actually the only one I’ll ever use because it is impossibly fudgy.

For those of you who don’t follow me on social media beyond Substack, I’ve been taking a break from Instagram and Facebook “for Lent.” The quotation marks around Lent means that I don’t observe Lent in any formal way, but have been needing to unplug and free my soul and spirit up to rest, recuperate, and hear from God. Routine breaks away from social media are something that I need. I enjoy incorporating them into my life as often as I can. We hear it constantly from each other: how much better we feel off social media and what a hard time we have living in a world that is so tied to virtual connection. It’s a culture that is hard to exist in, and it’s hard to exist outside of. Social media is a fixture in our world, and I think there are some positives to its existence. I also think it has to be kept in its proper function in our lives.

I have given a lot of thought to what I want my relationship with social media to be when I come back after Easter, and I think it will look something like continuing to take frequent breaks, keeping a strict time limit for myself on the apps (scrolling gets me, guys), and sitting down only once or twice a day for that allotted time versus breaking it up across my entire day so that I’m only letting it have my attention for a designated time. I like being unreliably reachable on social media. I like that I have my own creative ideas, that I am surprised by news (because I didn’t see it within three seconds of it being posted), that I am connecting with friends via actual texts, Facetimes, and phone calls rather than likes and Instagram messages. At the same time, I also value the camaraderie of certain neighborhoods on the internet like the one we’ve created in our corner of Instagram. As much as I’d like to be the person who pulls her parachute cord and jettisons out of the social media airplane forever, I don’t see that being something I fully want at this stage. I like to think there’s a hybrid approach that majors on the analog life and leaves a small wedge of time to keep up with an enjoyable form of digital content.

Don’t worry guys - I’m not out here waging war on the entire concept of social media. I did want to chat about it though! Let’s have a little chat about the signs that show me I’ve overdue for a break from it, as well as all the things I’ve been doing to fill the literal hours of my life I get back by not being on it. (Big yike.) So first up:

How I Know I’m Social-Sick:

• My mental hamsters-on-wheels start sprinting. I guess we can call this anxiety. I have had a weird relationship with the idea of anxiety because I have always equated the term “anxiety” with “fear” and I’m not at all a fearful or timid person. I also hate that, “my anxiety has been really bad” is such a popular claim. However, a friend of mine gently suggested that anxiety can also just look like a mind that won’t turn off and is constantly computing and re-computing future situations, to-do lists, past interactions, big-picture growth points, and every other possible thing there is to think about in an ceaseless manner. That would be me when I’ve been spending hours on social media. Anxiety, stress, hamsters-on-wheels. You get the picture.

• I start having absolutely twaddle dreams. Listen, I’ve always been a vivid dreamer, and I am somebody who does believe that some dreams can have meaning in a totally non-creepy way, but those dreams are very specific and infrequent. The type of dreams I’m talking about for the purpose of this post are like the regurgitated, restless, fantastical odds and ends of all the media I consumed during a day coming back to disrupt my sleep at night. I was dreaming vividly all night and waking up feeling unrested and annoyed. These weren’t nightmares or even bad dreams, just really dumb, nonsensical twaddle.

• I start scrolling a lot more. Rather than doing something logical like, I don’t know, recognizing that this isn’t working, I always approach the crux of a social-sick period by feeling anxious, tired, and disenchanted and medicating that by numbing out with a good old-fashioned scroll. It doesn’t make me feel any better, but that’s the beauty and harm of it all: if you keep scrolling you might find one really funny video or a pithy Instagram caption that inspires you to get off the couch and live your one wild and precious life.

• My pain-points are magnified. This is one that may be more of a Rachel thing than an Everybody thing, but I find that when I am on social media too much, the things I am struggling with feel harder. I don’t always fall prey to comparison in the way you’re probably thinking. Instead, I willfully enlarge my circles and my attention so much that I’m catching news hugely out of the range of people I’d typically encounter. This means that if I’m wishing hard for something to happen in my life, I don’t just see it happening for my actual friends in my actual community - I’m seeing it happen for celebrities, bloggers, artists, creatives, and a hundred other people whose lives I wouldn’t get this kind of update on if I wasn’t connected to them online. In my real world, there might be four people enjoying what I’m praying for; in my digital world, there are thirty-eight. There is so much we can’t control, like who we encounter out in the actual world and what’s going on in our real communities, so I have grown protective of what I allow in to my world that is optional. I have so much more genuine celebration left for my real friends, when I’m not divvying up that measure across digital acquaintances too. This isn’t to devalue the very real connections one can make (and I have made) online, it’s just to say that you are in charge of your own tender places. Care for yourself accordingly. This does not have to be the winter of your discontent.

• My creativity plummets. This is the natural outcome of a diet rich in everybody else’s ideas. I love consuming other people’s art and creativity - I think it is inspiring, emboldening, and a wonderful way to show support. What doesn’t work for me is consuming so much of everyone else’s ideas that I have no bandwidth left for my own. Each time my creativity takes a nose dive, I take a look at my screen time and realize that I’ve been on a social media bender. Maybe it isn’t creative block; maybe it’s an Instagram addiction.

Okay, so that’s how I gauge that I have a problem. I try to catch my symptoms before I have a flaming case of all five, but sometimes I have a rip-roaring fever of social media sickness. In either case, the cure is to take a solid break. If it’s a small case, sometimes a week (or even a few days) will suffice to catch me off rhythm and reset. Other times I need a longer time away and will set apart several weeks or even a month or more to detox from this thing that acts so much like a drug for my brain. Funny enough, actually keeping away from social media is not that hard once I begin. The biggest hurdle is deciding to do it. The first step for me is to get some accountability - I tell my husband, a friend, and usually my social media followers that I’m taking a break. This is not just so they don’t think I dropped off the face of the planet or that anything’s wrong, but so that there is accountability if I show back up before I’m due: “Hey Rachel, weren’t you taking a sabbatical?”

Next, I delete my apps. Okay, I usually delete my apps. But lately I’ve had some trouble finding/remembering/dealing with my multiple passwords and usernames so rather than delete the entire app, I move it off my home screen and (because I use an iPhone) bury it in the back of one of my app folders: usually something super boring like my “important information” folder. Out of sight out of mind. But in case it comes back up, I also go to my settings and set the screen-time limits to one minute for social media apps. For the first day my thumbs go searching for the missing apps (muscle memory is a thing) and I’m sort of weirdly adrift without this time-filler. After twenty-four hours, my thoughts start pinging around, joyously unburdened by any outside commentary. Within a few days I feel wider awake. Within a week I’m cruising, full of energy and curiosity and feeling as bright as I felt a decade ago before I first set up a Facebook account.

But what do I do with all that new-found time and sense of purpose? Honestly? A lot. It’s incredible how much spare time you unearth when you’re not spending most of it with your nose to a glowing, five inch screen.

Here are some things I’ve been doing on this social media break:

• Reading. So much reading.

• Finding things I thought I’d lost. This isn’t a metaphor. I’ve found actual missing items.

• Resurrecting my formerly-defunct Goodreads account and digging deep into my library checkouts ledger to update on my past couple years’ worth of books. I set an arbitrary goal to read 100 books this year and Goodreads tells me that at fifteen books read in 2023, I’m five behind the pace. They were all thick giants of books - I need to find some short books to catch me up! Have any recommendations?

• Signing up for a Whalebone Magazine subscription. Just got the Costa Rica issue in the mail and am savoring each page. Plus, now I want to go to Costa Rica and that’s a nice thing to think about. Basically I want to go anywhere they have unlimited access to fresh passionfruit, which is not here.

• Weeding my front flower beds - I pulled up so many dandelions that I really should have stopped and made a salad or something. They’re all organic!

• Finding that my peonies have already begun to sprout - will this be the year they bloom? I thought my dad’s landscape crew had disrupted them when they re-landscaped our front beds. But not so!

• Changing the sheets and dusting in my master bedroom.

• Staying on top of emails

• Sorting through photos in my phone and organizing the ones I don’t delete.

• Searching for a job. More on that another time, but if anyone is hiring this summer, let’s chat! I believe people can connect each other in incredibly special ways, so I’m casting far and wide and can offer an incredible work ethic, pretty great brain, many transferrable skills and experience, and a great sense of humor. Oh, and just so we’re clear: I’m not looking for a nannying position.

• Realizing I haven’t updated my resume since 2018, and the resume I made then was trash. Such a sad realization. I hate making a resume.

• Getting back into iced matcha lattes.

• Having deeper conversations because we are seeing each other.

• Listening to Annie F. Downs’s Let’s Read The Gospels podcast which is having us listen through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each month in different versions and arrangements. It’s a fascinating project!

• Planning my summer patio garden

• Updating my boring but serviceable apps, including on my laptop!

• Plotting what trees I’d plant if I had an actual yard (salix matsudana “corkscrew willow” is my frontrunner)

• Holding baby bunnies at a local farm

• Workshopping my platonic ideal of a weekday breakfast: it has to be high protein, involve a whole grain, and be portable and quick. This sets me up to not be having sugar cravings throughout the day and I think I’ve almost hacked it! Such a relief for a person who packs her breakfast everyday because she gets to work so early.

• Thinking about summer peaches

• Hanging out with my husband who is also taking a social media break (honestly so romantic to go analog together)

• Plotting our upcoming trip to Amsterdam! (I am megawatt excited about this)

• Loving our families - there have been a number of intense experiences across family lines the past few weeks and we are just thankful that everybody is okay, pretty much healthy, not kidnapped, and otherwise continuing on in the ways you hope your family always will. Love you guys.

• Sleeping like a baby

• Telling Andrew facts out of all the books I’ve read

• Watching Jeopardy!

• Going for hikes

• Shaving my legs

• Soft-launching spring dresses (hence the leg-shaving), albeit with heavy cardigans and much regret. It’s not that kind of weather yet.

• Spending $800 on car repairs and being real thankful for our recent frugality. SEE?

• And so much more

Life is good. It’s so good off of social media. I miss certain things (like completely roasting Oscar’s fashion Sunday night because I’m not on Instagram stories) but I treasure life with the rhythm of frequent, disconnected times. I wonder about you: have you taken breaks? Do you thrive online or do you find that you also require time away? What have you noticed in the quiet spaces without digital noise? Please share with the rest of us! I am deeply thankful that Substack still feels like a little cul-de-sac in the back of a neighborhood where kids can play in the street. It’s quiet here. I like it. Thanks for being here too.