Last week was one helluva month.
I’m not searching for sympathy or a pat on the back. Lots of folks have it much worse than I do and I’m grateful for all the wonderful things in my life as well as just the basics of food, shelter, and clean water. The above statement for me is mostly scene setting, okay?
It’s a weird time in the world. There’s a virus nonchalantly roaming about the earth trying to kill us. But that’s kind of understating and overstating it simultaneously, isn’t it? Even with much of the rampant progress slowed, there’s still lots of people losing their lives and it’s pretty clear that this thing is far from over. The overstatement is assigning some kind of motive or emotion to a virus. It really doesn’t care. It’s out to replicate and spread, because… that’s what a virus does.
Sort of like social media.
All right, that’s a bit of a reach, I know. But this virus and a big uptick in my social media consumption have been ramping up alongside each other for so long now that it’s hard for me to not draw a comparison. After the release of my much-heralded (by me at least) social media policy, I fell off the wagon.
Hard.
And then got run over by it.
A couple times.
It’s an ugly time to be on Facebook. People are scared, frustrated, angry, and suffering from late stage cabin fever. Giving someone the means to communicate with the rest of the world instantaneously under those circumstances is not a good idea. Almost as bad, if not worse, is consuming all those thoughts once they’ve been spewed out into the world.
For me, it started out by dropping in to post a link to my new blog post. Ah, the irony of the thing that was supposed to supplant Facebook wound up dragging me back to that hole. Dropping in became skimming became diving back in. Not leaving the house much didn’t help matters either. Next thing I knew, I was right back where I started from.
So, I unplugged this weekend – two days with no Facebook and maybe a momentary glance at Twitter and Instagram. And you know what? I feel cleansed. Lighter. I want more of this.
Which means that I’m renewing my social media policy once again. Wish me luck.