My Social Media Sabbatical and What I Learned
I’ve known for a while now that I have become addicted to social media. Honestly, who of us hasn’t?? Constantly scrolling, watching funny videos on Instagram or Tik Tok, all in the name of “research” for how to make my own page better or make my own reels. Also, it was my way of “checking out” when I felt overwhelmed by life or the kids were driving me crazy. But it got to the point that I was spending HOURS on my phone every day. I was barely painting, going to bed waaaaay too late and too busy playing on my phone to play with my kids. I developed signs of ADHD, not being able to concentrate on anything for very long. Zoning out for hours on end. I panicked if I couldn’t find my phone immediately to check if I had any new notifications.
I knew I needed to make a change, but was what I doing really so bad? I need social media for my business! I need to show my art to the world! I put an app timer on my home screen so I could see how much time I was really spending on social media hoping that the hard face of reality would help, but all it did was make me feel guilty about that hour count. And what did I do to self-soothe? More mindless scrolling. I wanted to set a good example for my kids and not be constantly staring at my phone when I was around them. Another toxic trait I developed was constant comparison to other artists. Instead of being inspired by and proud of other artists for their beautiful work and their successes (and my own), I was becoming very jealous. Why wasn’t my work that beautiful? Why didn’t I have sold out collections like them? They had everything I wanted and I had nothing in my mind. Jealousy is an ugly emotion and yet, I was full of it, and not proud of it.
So I decided I needed a clean break. I set aside a day to delete Instagram and Facebook off of my phone and tablet at least until the new year. That was 6 weeks away. And let me tell you, at first it was HARD. I was twitchy and jittery like an addict. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I was irritable. I realized how bad my addiction and reliance on social media had become. Nevertheless, I persisited. I focused on other areas of my business, like emails and my course.
I had started brainstorming for my course over a year and a half ago, but my materials lay untouched for most of 2022. But now I had all this time on my hands! I set out to create an outline and a draft for my course. I needed to organize my thoughts and all my research material and figure out what the heck I wanted to teach. In only 2 weeks, I had a course outline and a rough draft for all 3 of my main modules. 14 pages on typed work and exercises! I couldn’t believe how quickly I made progress now that I wasn’t distracted by social media! Not only that, I read about 3 novels and half of a motivational business book. I felt unstoppable.
My family and I took a trip to Hawaii for 2 weeks and instead of being paranoid about getting the best Instagram worthy pictures, I just stayed in the moment. Should I have taken more pictures to remember the trip by? Probably. But seeing my kids have the time of their lives and noticing every time they looked up to see if I was watching them was so worth it. How many times have they looked up before and noticed me too busy on my phone? I’ll never know, nor get those moments back. That doesn’t mean that that won’t still happen. But I’m determined to significantly reduce the number of times it does.
I do need social media for my business. And it’s always nice to see photos of friends and their families that I don’t get to see often. But, I am determined to keep my social media usage in its rightful place. I will use it as a tool, instead of letting it use me. I’ve given myself very strict parameters on how I will use social media going forward, including an app timer that will shut the app off after a set amount of time.
So what did I learn on my social media sabbatical?
Social Media can be a dangerous addiction.
I can be the artist and mother I want to be by setting goals and making progress.
Comparing myself to others is destructive behaviour.
I am a work in progress, I always will be. Will I slip back into old patterns? Only time will tell. This sabbatical has helped me to develop new, constructive habits that I’m determined to keep. So here’s hoping.