Day 30: 30-day #noFacebook challenge - Time to move on

Today's the last day of my 30-day #noFacebook challenge, and I can safely say that my habits have been altered. I was sufficiently able to curb my Facebook use, and I don't think I'll ever return to the way things were before. I feel so much less looming pressure to sit and wait for notifications on something that I've said or posted about.

I am getting used to being alone with my thoughts, again, to not needing the validation that I'm witty or smart or deep. I can just be me and not worry about who I'm presenting myself as. I am me.

As the great Chuck Wendig so eloquently put it in his blog post today: "I will try to be present when the world asks that I be present."

And now it's time to move on.

Yesterday I mentioned a new 30-day challenge I'm going to embark on. I won't post about it in the same way I have the #noFacebook challenge, but it's another important one for me. For the next 30 work days (Monday thru Friday) I will spend at least 2 hours working outside my home.

See, I'm a freelance editor of novels. I get to work at home and read some pretty cool stories, and help authors sculpt their manuscripts into the best book they can write. It's an amazing job, but it takes a lot of time behind the screen. I have been going a little crazy being at my computer in my house all day every day.

But I also have a little anxiety disorder that makes the thought of taking myself anywhere else to work seem like this huge, horrible, scary thing that could never be accomplished. Because what about buses and finding power for my laptop and not being approached by weird scary people and getting thrown out of somewhere because I've been there too long and they don't like me anymore and being hungry or thirsty or needing a bathroom...? All the worst case scenarios I can think of... right now...

Obviously those are all not life-threatening problems and most are easily surmountable, but when you have anxiety disorder it makes everything seem unsolvable and life-threatening. So... yesterday, with a little extra encouragement from my good friend Gabriela over at DIY MFA, I ventured out into the wild for the first of my thirty days of working outside my home.

Yesterday's plan was to hit the library at 10, work for a couple hours, and then reward myself with a tasty lunch that was on the bus route home. Only the library didn't open until 1! (A worst case scenario I hadn't accounted for.) I almost went home right then, but it was my first day of challenging myself and I was determined. So I walked a mile to the downtown area and found some food and a seat with a plug next to it at Panera. And I spent three hours plowing through a frustrating manuscript to finish it instead of needing to work on it again today.

Today I'm at the library. Got here at 1:30. I got the bus schedule wrong, so I ended up spending an extra ten minutes waiting at the stop because it wasn't long enough for me to walk back to my apartment and wait, but now I'm here I have a good seat with a plug for my laptop and I'm shaking off the frustration that the library opened at 10 today... I'll get it right eventually.

My goal in all this is to face a fear, no matter how trivial it may seem to the rest of the world... and to eventually give my brain some external stimulus and help me feel more connected to the city in which I live.

So, reader, what about you? What fears do you need to face? How can you push yourself to try something new and different, even if it's a little scary? What new habit do you want to cultivate that I can encourage you in?

Day 29: 30-day #noFacebook challenge - The Penultimate Day

I've normalized my Facebook addiction in the sense that I don't NEED it anymore... but I feel that if I were to revert to my earlier way of thinking, if I let myself use Facebook whenever I wanted, it would take back over pretty quickly. So I'm not going to. I'm going to keep this once a day Facebook restriction as part of my every day. No more 30 day challenge after tomorrow... just normal life.

In other news, today I'm staring a new 30-day challenge (with some caveats that I'll explain later)... I'm going to try working outside my home. I'm a freelance editor by day, and while I love love love the job, the flexibility, the actual work... it can get challenging living inside the same 4 walls I work in.

So I'm challenging myself to get out and work in different places around my community this week. There are psychological reasons why this will be a) hard and b) totally worthwhile for me. So I'm diving in today! I'll let you know where I end up.

Day 24: 30-day #noFacebook challenge - Almost

I've pretty much decided to keep this restricted Facebook access habit. I like being in control of it instead of it being in control of me, is what it comes down to. There's no need for me to hover over the site waiting for notifications to pop up. I can get on with life just fine without them.

I'm wondering what my next 30-day challenge will be... I like the finite-ness of 30 days. It's not all that long, but long enough to make you feel like you've accomplished something when you get through it.

Leave suggestions for me? I'll give them due consideration and let you know in a few days what I decide to take on next!

Day 22: 30 day #noFacebook challenge - Real life is no piece of cake!

It's been 22 days. I haven't posted here every day like I wanted to, but I'm going to cut myself a little slack. I was participating in (and winning) Camp NaNo, so my writing time went elsewhere. But I also, in not hovering around Facebook every waking moment, spend a lot less time online in general. Which was not unexpected, I suppose, but... it has interesting side effects, this #noFacebook challenge.

What I've noted, now that I think the honeymoon period is over, is that real life is no piece of cake either. I have hit my head against a few walls in dealing with relationships people that I love dearly and who love me that I might not have hit if I'd been self-medicating with online interaction. But now I'm out in the open, floundering around and dealing with life while it's in front of me. And it's not necessarily pretty. But I'm trying. And no one has died yet. So... there's that.

I guess that, if you're going to try a challenge like this, you have to start from a belief that real life is worth the extra time that you're going to give it. And I do believe that, even with all its bumps and bruises. Life is worth living unmasked.

Day 17: 30-day #noFacebook Challenge - cookies

Today is better again. Today I feel normal. Today I like life away from the virtual chatter of what everyone else is or is not doing.

I baked cookies. I swam. I watered the garden. I read. If you wanted to know.

Almond butter cookies.

They were delicious.

Day 16: 30-day #noFacebook challenge - Moodswings

Man that voice in my head is tricky... the one that yesterday morning that was so triumphant, so sure that I was disconnecting from Facebook and that I didn't need it to be content...

But that voice... that voice... last night was so insistent that logging into Facebook a second time to change my profile picture was completely justifiable. I had just hit my Camp NaNo word count goal, after all... I needed to celebrate, right? Luckily, I talked myself back out of it before I did, choosing to wait until this morning when I logged on for my once daily to do it.

That voice was so sure that winning Camp NaNo was an urgent need, something that would lose luster if I waited any time at all to post about it. It was painful denying myself... but if I hadn't, I wouldn't really be able to continue this challenge. I would have failed. Because the whole point is that there's nothing that urgent. Sure winning Camp NaNo is important, but because it's important to ME, not because of the validation I'd get by posting about it for likes. It can wait. I can wait.

Day 15: 30 day #noFacebook challenge - Halfway

Today I hit the halfway mark in my 30-day challenge. I had to go back and count the days to figure that out. And I think that's a good thing.

I doubt this will be the halfway mark, really. I have a feeling that this will continue, perhaps with a little leeway given occasionally, but probably not, actually. I don't need it.

I have moments of this strange fear... fear that by unplugging this way that I'm somehow becoming irrelevant. But if anything I'm more relevant to my own life, to my own sense of here and now. And I'm content with that.

If I were the type of person for whom it didn't matter, the connection/disconnection of Facebook and the saltgrain motion of minutia and misinformation that goes on there, then I could probably behave more relaxedly toward the website. I wouldn't need to restrict myself. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I'm not that type of person... I recognize it and I don't like who I am when I'm using the site more freely.

I want to make sure I make time for the rest of my life and don't fritter it away staring at updates from everyone I know in cyberspace. I'll see you face to face. If not soon, then someday. And I look forward to that.

Day 11: 30-day #noFacebook Challenge - Echo chamber

Just because there's more noise doesn't mean there's more happening...

It feels quiet on the outside of Facebook. I definitely feel the alone-ness more out here, the silence is palpable somehow. I have more space, more time to spend in my own head. It's not being filled up with thoughts from the content mill anymore. It's there to be filled up with me.

I've been thinking that just because there's more action on Facebook, more notifications, more posts to draw your eye, doesn't necessarily mean there's more going on. It just one big echo chamber where the nothing keeps getting bounced around in the form of inane news articles about Donald Trump and the latest personality quiz telling you what your spirit animal is and which Harry Potter character you were in a past life. Instead of being still and silent so that you can fill it with your own thoughts.

You take the same quiz over and over and it tells you the same thing about yourself every time, which is exactly what you want to hear or believe about yourself. There's nothing new under the sun. Only now you have an outside source to validate it for you.

The so-called news is almost as bad as the "Forward this to at least 307 friends or you'll have bad luck for 10 years" post...

And how many people actually read what their friends' responses are to those "7 new things about me" surveys they tag you in? Nobody is looking at anybody but themselves. It's one big Echo Chamber reflecting you back to you, reflecting me back to me.

Day 9: 30-day #noFacebook Challenge - what's important

Wanna know a secret?

I love to cook. Before 7 this morning I was up making a fudge sauce to put into homemade ice cream for a friend's party later.

If you know me, it's not so much a secret, I guess. I'm always feeding people... it's part of my personal magic.

Getting stuck on social media inhibits my ability to share that gift, though. I start to feel rushed, like there's no time to do the things I want, because I've wasted it all staring at the computer screen. Not only that, but a screen is no substitute for real life. I can't feed my friends on Facebook. We don't get to gather in each other's physical presence. When I spend too much time on Facebook, I'm living elsewhere, not here. I want to live here, to experience now and be present for my life as it happens.

As you'll notice, I missed posting here a couple of days. I was so busy enjoying life that I didn't have that much time in front of the computer... and what time I had was spent writing, looking up recipes and patterns for creations that I can share with others.

I'm finding my mental and temporal freedom exhilarating.