Hello again!
I have more ‘returning to the simple life’ to talk about. I’m doing a little digital housecleaning. My phone alone is a little overwhelming sometimes. I never heard anything make so many different dings and rings and so often. I thought all the fancy ringtones and notifications were cute, and they were, for a while. Then they were just annoying as hell. And the barrage of email messages, mostly from stores or some other form of marketing, was more than any one person can keep up with. Voicemail, email, text, calls, aaaaaahhhhhh!!!! Oh wait, I left out all the social media notifications. I swear I got notifications of notifications and some from people I don’t even know just because we both joined the same group. Ridiculous! I have been thinking about doing something about all that for a while, and so the other day an incident triggered me and I just hit delete.
I think I may have acted rashly with this latest, but I’ll just have to wait and see. I don’t want this blog to be get political, but one of my reasons for doing what I did was political. Actually, I think it was just an excuse, but it’s a good one. Censorship. I’m sure all of you are against censorship also. What if one day you woke up to find that your blog was just gone. Someone didn’t like what you had to say and didn’t want anyone else to read it so they just deleted it like it never existed, like you never existed. That’s what Facebook has been up to so I just deleted myself. I will not support that. I also deleted my Instagram because Facebook owns it. It’s only been a day or two so I’m still a little ambivalent about it, but the longer I’m without it, the clearer my mind is. At first, I wasn’t sure what would happen. Would I lose all my contacts? What about events I had saved and wanted to go to? How would I keep in touch with distant family and friends? As time goes by, and it’s really only been a couple of days, I am remembering old and learning new ways to communicate and keep in touch. It was anxiety inducing at first, I won’t lie, because I actually hit the delete button. Thankfully, I did download all of my files from Facebook and Instagram to my hard drive before I hit that scary little button. While I won’t reestablish those forums, I still have my contacts so that I can establish new modes of communication. I wasn’t completely rash.
I also unsubscribed from a gazillion email lists and deleted every email in my two inboxes, yep, right down to zero. THAT was immediately gratifying, yet also anxiety inducing. I found myself thinking, “What if there was something important? What am I missing?” Yes, I had a FOMO moment. Then I thought about all the things I wouldn’t be missing anymore. I can now delete everything as it comes in and not be overwhelmed by the shear numbers of messages. Nice. Peaceful, calm mind, just by pressing one little button. I think I will be a lot more present in the moment and I’ll actually be living more. Life is going to get real again and that is good.
So, this is my experiment with simplifying my digital life. I wonder what will come of it.
Have a peaceful day,
Julie