Early Mornings and Social Media

I didn't go walking this morning, but I still woke up at 5:30. My house does not lend itself well to early rising and keeping the kids asleep. Between my floor plan and my kids' tendency to be easily roused in the morning, I can't really be awake and do anything without waking someone. I'm paranoid to roll over in bed, let alone get out of bed. Every movement I make is a risk, so I have to decide if it's worth it to try and get up or if I should just lay in bed in silence.

I know laying in bed sounds very appealing to some, but it's torture for me if I'm not sleeping or watching TV. I can't just LAY THERE! Yesterday I woke up at 3:30 and laid in bed unable to fall back asleep for an hour and a half before I finally got up.

All of this is to say that I am awake early, and I'm blogging, which is very risky because my laptop creates light and clickety clack sounds. I can already hear Eva stirring. It will only be a couple of minutes before she is yelling for a sippy cup of milk. She is in a bedroom behind a closed door, and yet, she knows.

My children are like animals.

Because of all of the above, I would like someone to insert a microchip in my brain that allows me to write blog posts with my mind and send them to my draft folder. It will be the ultimate luxury! ...until the government taps into my microchip and uses it to make me into a war machine.

To get into the right spirit for the holidays, I decided to stay away from social media for the month of November - specifically instragram and facebook. I guess blogging is technically a form of social media (it is, right?) but it doesn't intrude on my life like other platforms do, so I'm still blogging, and I'm still using YouTube because the things I use YouTube for are not sucking up my life (mostly I use it to listen to music while I clean).

I have a Pinterest account, but Pinterest is not a problem for me at all. I don't follow anyone on Pinterest, and I rarely use it. I just have a few boards for things like Cub Scouts (which I'm not involved in anymore) and birthday poster ideas.

As I've been weaning off my social media habit, I've had a lot of people ask me how it's going (I posted on social media that I would not be using social media in November in order to help me be more accountable). The conversations have been interesting. I've had a couple of people join me, which is awesome because we can check in on each other. But I've also had some people tell me how they could never go without social media - it would completely destroy them! I've asked people what types of social media they use, and the answers astound me. It turns out that my social media use is so minimal in comparison to other people, and yet, I feel my social media use has gotten out of control.

Part of the reason I wanted to step away from it for a while is because I was reading about a research study where they needed participants (college students) to not use social media for 24 hours. The drop-out rate was around 90%. Some refused to even try while others tried and gave up before the end of the 24 hours.

I'm not really part of that demographic, and I know that I can go 24 hours without social media, but it's still too big a part of my life. I've developed some bad habits, and I find myself reaching for my phone all too often, and I get really antsy if I don't know where my phone is. So I wanted to detox and then in December, I will try to set some new boundaries for social media for myself.

Even without social media, though, I'm still on my phone all the time. I worry about my kids seeing me use my phone so much, but my phone hosts everything! It's my alarm clock, my radio, my checkbook, my calculator, my GPS, my scriptures, and more. I need to be better about setting aside time for cell phone tasks rather than picking up my phone over and over all day long. It also might be good for me to use a real calculator and real scriptures a little more because my kids will know I'm reading the scriptures if they see me holding a Bible. They don't know I'm reading the scriptures if I'm holding my phone. I need to think about what it looks like to them.

I often think about what it would be like if a disaster were to knock out all of our cell phones and internet service. I imagine an EMP attack or something that massively wipes it all out at once. I want to be one of the survivors. I don't want to be the person writhing on the ground unable to meet my basic Maslow needs because I can't function without my phone.

Technology is such a blessing, but it's a blessing that I need to make sure I can step away from occasionally.