Week 1 – Addiction to withdraw real quick 

Hi friends, and welcome back to Social Distancing from Social Media. First, can I say how long this week was! I feel like it took forever to get to Sunday. Anyways, onto the important part. So week one of social distancing from social media has commenced and honestly, I don’t feel too bad. I thought that the first week would be the hardest one because I’m not used to no social media, but nope. I think that “going cold turkey” might have helped. The only thing that I do miss about it is my friends. Social media allows me to talk to my friends that are miles away. Especially with times like these, it keeps me connected, so in a way that’s the only thing I’m truly missing. To keep myself faithful to this process, I deleted every social media app off of my phone so I couldn’t even test my strength. Maybe that’s what I’ll do for the last week, add all of my apps and see if I can go the last week without opening any of them. Ok but back to this week. Social Distancing is already showing a positive result in my life. In this single week, my screen time has dropped tremendously and has allowed me to increase my productivity levels. Since this is the last week of classes, I have been able to put my focus towards my assignments and studying, so I’m interested in seeing how things change once school is over. Now that I’m not stuck on my phone, I’ve been exercising more. I began working on my personal blog, and trying new recipes, like these apple pancakes that I made, which were delicious by the way.

I also had the opportunity to volunteer at my father’s church. With 3 more weeks of social distancing, I’m excited to see what new things I can try. This past week, I attempted a painting I saw on Youtube, which was a lot easier than I thought that it would be. A look into the week, here’s what I have planned. First, taking all of my finals this week, a challenge in itself. Next, I want to attempt a new painting, it’s essentially a girl dancing in the moonlight. This is the link to the video that I will be following and I will compare the two next week. Lastly, I will be trying this black bean burger recipe I found. During this quarantine, I’ve been changing my eating habits to a more plant-based diet, so it’ll be interesting to see how they taste. Thanks again for reading and see you all in a week!

Week 2 & 3 – Social Distancing 

Hello everybody, 

So first off I decided to combine weeks two and three together because honestly, they have kind of blurred together. Week 2 was spent putting my focus into getting ready for finals, like going over readings, reviewing with my classmates, and making study guides. Now that the stress of week 2 is over, I can move to summer break. I look forward to painting some more, hopefully hanging out with my friends once the world re-opens and basketball! Last week, I tried the black bean burger recipe and they turned out really tasty. So if you’re looking for an alternate recipe for burgers, I definitely recommend it. 

Onto the painting of the dancer in the moon… well, that did not turn out exactly how I wanted it too, but it wasn’t too terrible. While painting, I realized that I did not have the same colors that the creator had. So, I did what I could. The picture to the left is the original painting and the picture to the right is my painting. 

 

Week three has pretty much been a blur, from transitioning to break mode, to rushing to work at Chipotle, I haven’t really had time to myself. Going into the last week of my social distancing from social media, I plan to read some more. I used to love reading as a child, but as I’ve gotten older and became busier, I haven’t read anything besides textbooks for the most part. This last week, I’m also going to attempt to learn how to do a side ariel. I will probably not succeed but I’ll have fun trying.

Next, I am going to try this landscape painting that I found on Youtube, and hopefully, this one will go a lot better than the girl in the moon painting. Stay tuned for my last blog post where I’ll share how the last week of my social distancing went, and how I plan to make changes in my social media habits. 

Final Week of Social Distancing from Social Media 

Hello everyone and welcome back to the last week of social distancing from social media. This entire journey has been a really good experience and I’m very proud that I was able to do this cleanse for a full month without going on social media. Before I get into my final thoughts on the process, let’s first do a recap of the final week. 

This last week, I was really busy with work so that took up a majority of my time, resulting in me not being able to do my landscape painting, and I’m kinda bummed about that. However, I did try to learn how to do a side ariel, and as expected it was a complete flop. I really give props to all the gymnasts and dancers out there that can do this, because it’s very challenging compared to how easy it looks. With my time in this last week, I began reading the book “Dear Evan Hansen”, based upon the musical on Broadway. During the spring school semester, I got the book to read since I was going to see the musical on Broadway over spring break. Obviously my plans were changed due to COVID-19, so the book is the closest thing I have to it. So far it has been really interesting and I’m intrigued as to how it ends. Overall this last week of social distancing has gone really well and I’m really glad for the experience. 

This entire process has taught me a lot about myself and the way that I used to use social media. Before this process, I would just be on my phone scrolling through stories when I felt like I had nothing to do. This experience has changed my views a little bit. Social media is fun to reach out and connect to friends and family, but it can also be a huge distraction. This little cleanse has taught me that there is such a thing as a balance so that you can enjoy social media and not be addicted to your phone. 

After the month had been over, I immediately found myself downloading all of my old apps and scrolling through my feeds to see what I missed. But after wasting an hour of my life, I realized that I didn’t want this to be my life again. I now go on social media a few times in the day to say hi to friends, this way I am more productive on my day and can get more tasks accomplished. This experience was really eye-opening and it’s something that I highly recommend everyone trying if they feel like they are addicted to their phone. Thank you guys for reading and I hope you all are staying safe and healthy during this quarantine.