Okay. So. I had like, a third of a post typed yesterday and then my schedule kind of all went to shit. I had a fever and chills, not much of an appetite (though I did make sure to eat), and just kind of felt malaise-y all day. I also discovered that phenylephrine hydrochloride, the new decongestant added to cold and flu meds that replaced pseudoephedrine, gives me wicked heart palpitations (pseudoephedrine doesn't, although from what I can find online that shouldn't be the case, so idk). So I didn't even want to take that much cold and flu medication. (Yes, I know I can get some behind the counter).
The good news I received today is that some work I had to do in the lab has been done by someone else. So me not going in to start cells yesterday and not being able to do it Monday was really for the best. My current work mostly involves me bugging my supervisor about some other data we need... and all this points to me likely being able to start writing my thesis in earnest sometime this summer or fall. As much as I've been looking forward to that... I am also kind of terrified. I have no idea how to write a thesis. But I do like writing, and I did enjoy my comprehensive exam, so I should probably be able to make it work. Anything to get out of the fucking lab (I cannot overstate how much I hate lab work).
So, yay... I get to stay home. Finally. And my husband is out Mountain-ing today, so he won't be around to distract me like he was yesterday. And suddenly... oh dear. Not much going on... need to entertain myself... here we go again.
The thing is, at this point I realize that when I find an activity I want to do that is a bit more long-term in nature: writing one of these posts, watching a TV show or movie, playing a video game, hanging out with my husband, taking a nap... I'm not as drawn to social media. It's all those moments in between. When I have to pee. When I'm waiting for the kettle to boil. When I'm waiting for a machine to finish analyzing something at the lab. When I'm waiting for my cell culture media to warm up (in the lab). When I'm waiting for my computer to update. When I don't want to go do the next thing I know I have to do. That's when I miss it most. The rest of the time, it's fine.
Of course if I could actually just use it in those moments, it would be fine. But the problem I realize now is that it was never just those moments. Five minutes in the car becomes 20. A 30 second pee now takes ten minutes. My husband and I will agree to go to lunch when we sleep in on the weekends and end up spending an hour getting stuck in social media loops. I'll wake up at 8:15AM, but then stay in bed scrolling until 10:30. I meant to take a five minute break from work... and now it's 3 hours later. You get the gist. The way these apps are set up is not to allow you those little breaks in the day but to suck you in for as long as humanly possible, and they do not and never will include barriers or blocks that are not easily overcome. Even the stuff available on phones that allows you to limit screen time is all too easily ignored or overcome (or the blocking app deleted). Right now I'm all too aware that I'd have to go to the app store, download the apps, and sign in, and I could use them again. But that's like, three steps, which is significantly more inconvenient than just not doing anything. There's also something about not using them at all which makes it easier to keep doing it than trying to use them in 5 minute increments. It's like behavioural inertia. It's hard to stop once you start.
Something I did notice yesterday was that like... despite not knowing what friendly acquaintances are up to, my life is relatively unchanged. When I think back on it, the people that I'm closest to really posted the least. I got slightly more baby updates from my one friend with a 6 month old, but that's about it. Most of what I did on instagram was really just sending memes and reels to my husband, my sister, two friends in town, and one friend out of town that I've known since high school. Yesterday, I read a news story about widowed geese (complete with pictures of a despondent goose, which caused me to feel an emotion I cannot name) and my first impulse was to share it to my instagram story. When I realized I couldn't do that... I sent it to my family (husband, my parents, and my sister), the two friends in town, and the one friend out of town. And I did not need instagram to do it.
Today, I realized that I have been seeing a LOT less advertising, whether directly or indirectly. Obviously I'm not seeing ads or influencers anymore, but I'm also not like, getting jealous of clothes from watching hauls, or someone talking about how something they got didn't fit, or even just watching someone else evaluate and downsize their wardrobe. I'm no longer subject to the constant feed of other people's tastefully curated modern homes. I know I talked about this before, but I guess it hits every couple of days. Today I just noticed that there was an absence of pressure to buy things. Back then I noticed more that I was jealous or wanting. And that part is nice too, not playing the comparison game. I notice a little more that I'm no longer looking at my face or my outfits and being like oh god how does THIS look to an outsider. There's less comparison. I mean, I still want to change things, don't get me wrong, but it's less in my face all the time. Do I want to clean up my office desk and make it aesthetically pleasing? Sure, but now that other images of clean and aesthetic looking office desks aren't in my face all the time, the feeling is different. More creative, less comparative.
Another thing I miss that I find is hard to replicate elsewhere is the sort of exposure to different ideas I got. I know everyone talks about social media being an echo chamber, and I think that's true, but I don't know where else I would have run into the concept of "bare minimum mondays" if not for it being shown to me on tiktok. I like that concept a lot. Is it maybe something I could have come up with myself? Sure, I guess. I've come up with lots of little ways to live my life that make it easier while also discarding useless social rules I didn't even realize I had picked up. The best example of this I have is when I started leaving for school an hour earlier than when I needed to be there, which was more of a mindset shift than anything that has significantly decreased my lateness. Calculating how long it would take me to get there so as to arrive perfectly on time was just not working for me, because I never leave when I say I'm going to, and I always forget to consider something. Ergo: just overshoot it. The concept of "just take it easy on monday" may well have occurred to me long ago.
But there being good on social media was never really for granted. It does let us stay connected with people far away without the need for one-on-one emails or phone calls. It does sometimes show us really interesting and unique information. I've made recipes off social media that turned into favourites, I've used crochet techniques I found on there RANDOMLY (i.e. without purposefully searching for them) on gifts I've given others, and I've found really insightful and thoughtful posts from others that allowed me to re-evaluate my life philosophy and values. I think the question I have to answer now is: is all that good stuff worth the bad shit? I know I spent more time getting angry on there and getting increasingly frustrated with various aspects of it (repetitive language, general and broad worldviews, and the inane nature of some of the songs) than I ever did finding new information. Also like... humanity has been around for a long time and people that wanted to find new insights have always managed to find them. The fact that I have to pivot isn't necessarily bad.
I'm at the point where I seriously wonder if any of this is actually unique even to me anymore as I write it. But I think this kind of format is really helping me tame the impulse to log back on. If I can put it here instead of on an instagram story, then I'm staying off, which is my goal for the month.
The other part though is that like... I think I was looking for an excuse to do this. I realized that with something else earlier this year: alcohol. Canada released some new guidelines about how many drinks is safe based on research, and they finally just said honestly, it's a carcinogen, and none is the best amount. One article I read had a girl saying "well, everything gives you cancer these days. That doesn't seem like a good enough reason to avoid it to me." I have always, always been the one saying "yeah, everything gives you cancer, so do what you want" to most things, but I didn't have that instinct this time. It made me realize I kind of wanted to be able to use the guidelines as a reason not to drink. I have several recent (i.e. within the last two years) memories where me being drunk significantly decreased the quality of an event. So I decided to be sober for 2023. Just to see what it is like. And like that whole journey with alcohol, I think I was finally just curious enough about social media abstinence to bother to try it. It's just like... hey, I notice this thing is having an impact on my life that I don't like. I can't seem to moderate it the way I want to. What would happen if I just abstained for a while?
All that to say that doing this feels like an inevitable next step in my journey of realizing in my mid-to-late 20s that I actually can do whatever I want with my life and it's not just some prescribed path like I believed until I was like, 23.
There's also a certain je ne sais quoi to this that I can't quite describe. Things are different now in a way that hasn't occurred to me. The tone of my life has changed in just a week. Maybe if I keep writing, I'll find a way to put it into words.
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