#why do you think making snarky posts online is going to solve the problem; and if not why do you keep acting like it does

[meowchela]

god following a couple swiftie accounts is healing my soul ngl.....like i'm so used to people on this site wanting her dead in the streets its nice to see someone else who actually likes her music for a change 😭

[ill-be-istj-if-no-one-else-is]

Anatomy of an Ask (Entire Post)

I suspect that there’s no way within the framework of Tumblr to force people to ask things that will be productive, but I figured it might be helpful to really go into my thought process when I receive a question. This got really long. I’m making one Giant Post and then I’ll split it up as well so that both options are available.

Before you start: this is going to be really blunt. I try not to be deliberately hurtful to people who are acting in good faith, but I’m not really a warm fuzzy person in general, and I find people are not great at taking subtle hints on the internet so I’m going in with an anvil here.

Before I get the question: My MBTI knowledge was obtained through reading a lot of things both online (in which case they’re probably in my resource links), a few books (I haven’t done a huge amount of book reading so it’s mostly Was That Really Me and Gifts Differing), and a lot of practical observation.

The practical observation part has been, for me, by far the most valuable, but it does require a certain level of reflection and willingness to admit when you’re wrong. Basically: once you feel confident-ish in your ability to type other people, go out and type them and then observe their behavior, which will help you recognize behavior patterns for that type. The reason it requires reflection is because it is possible to mistype someone initially. You need to constantly ask yourself “is this person truly this type, and the stereotypes are wrong? Or did I mistype them”. Examples include: ISFP sister is actually not bad at organizing within certain parameters, but it tends to be fairly rigid and a little uncomfortable. She’s just a reasonable example of how an ISFP can develop organization skills. However, I originally thought my brother was an INFP when he was really an ENFP, and so when I realized I was wrong I had to revise both my typing of him and my understanding of INFPs and ENFPs. I originally thought my closest friend was an INTP and I’m actually still in the process of questioning that. (This is why “am I mistyped” is a useless question. You should always assume mistyping is possible).

So basically if I say I get a certain vibe from a question or interaction or story, it’s because of patterns I’ve seen from this practical observation that I might struggle to even realize I’ve seen. And there’s no way around this other than experience (ie, observation + time).

When an MBTI question arrives: is it easily searchable (I do usually check, on mobile, that a search of the obvious key term returns something useful as one of the top results - I try not to delete stuff that I’ve answered before but is hard to easily search on) or answered in the FAQ? Delete it unless there’s a good point to be made or I’m feeling particularly generous and/or snarky.

Next, mentally categorize it. Questions tend to fall into a couple of broad categories:

Questions about the theory: ideally, coming from someone who can say “I read your FAQ and I’m still confused about some of the statements regarding inferior Se, because of X, Y, and Z”. A pure theory question is pretty simple; usually it’s just a matter of directing people to a better, harder-to-find source post or providing some clarification.

Type me questions from people who haven’t typed themselves: varies, see below.

Type me questions from people who have typed themselves to some extent: also varies, see below.

“What does X look like”: I would typically like to shoot these questions into the sun because functions are broad archetypes and so while you can summarize details of a real person to an archetype it is not so easy to do the reverse. However, I limit myself to a general answer of “if you’d like me to type you or someone else provide a description” thus reducing this to a type me question.

“How likely is X combination”: I just stopped answering these on the grounds that you can look this up yourself very easily. However, usually these have an undercurrent of ‘type me’ except no information is given so there’s nothing I can do. If information is given, see the Type me posts (also tagged anatomyofanask)

What’s useful in typing?

Remember: information that is useful for typing is:

Unique: it’s okay if other people on earth share this trait, but ‘I like music’ or ‘I have morals’ are true of most humans. Make sure you describe you and not 99% of all people.

Typical of you: if you went skydiving once but normally you wouldn’t get on a roller coaster that goes upside-down you are not a thrill-seeker; you are a person who went skydiving once. Focus on your sustained and regular behavior.

From your mid-teens/adult life, and ideally recent. You want to talk about your childhood, do so with your friends or with a therapist because it’s not usually relevant. Not yet in your mid-teens? Typing is going to be really hard and it will be so much easier when you’ve had a few more years - part of why being 15 is so gloriously confusing is because it’s a time of immense growth and change. I highly recommend you focus on becoming an awesome person without trying to categorize it. MBTI has been around for over 70 years. It will be there in a couple more.

Not MBTI jargon: Avoid statements “I seem really Ne!” or “I have absolutely no Fe.” These are useless statements to me: either you’re correct in your assessment in which case contacting me is useless because you’ve already typed yourself as having Ne/not having Fe and are confident in it; or you’re not correct in your assessment but I can’t tell because you didn’t describe what you mean by Ne or Fe.

Not the stereotypical MBTI descriptions: related to the above. At this point I not only do not trust these phrases and find them completely meaningless; I also get annoyed that you’re using them and yet somehow I’m supposed to be the boring and uncreative one per stereotypes. “Good at reading people”, “very much/always in my head” and “my morals are subjective/objective” or “my logic is subjective/objective” are the top offenders. Here’s the problem. People aren’t great at being objective about themselves. People are even worse at being objective about how objective they are. Also the fact that almost all of these are skewed towards intuition means I have my doubts.

Exemplified: provide examples of your behavior. If you do this instead of using stereotypical MBTI descriptions, you will solve two of my problems at once. If you can actually explain to me why you think you’re good at reading people, I can assess if you genuinely are or if you’re projecting assumptions on people. And in general, this is what I need to type people.

Consequential: people rely on their higher functions the most when it has to do with things that, for lack of a better term, matter IRL. Which doesn’t mean you don’t bring your A game to your hobbies! But the fact is, if you drop the ball in your hobbies your life still goes on. I once tried to start a podcast and it almost immediately fell by the wayside. Was it disappointing? Yeah. Would I dream of doing this when it comes to say, my job, or my schoolwork (when I was in school) or something I had committed to that other people relied on? No. Like, if you don’t update your fan fic on time, or you kill people in video games that can certainly have an emotional effect on you and people around you. But the consequences of that are not exactly the same of not paying your rent on time, or cheating on someone in real life. So: focus on how you interact with people, how you act at work or at school, how you plan your life.

Varied: one long specific anecdote, even if it’s a thing you do regularly, is only so helpful. A couple of examples of different behaviors makes a huge difference. Two points make a line.

Type Me

(I’ve been calling this Type Me but it also applies to Type My Friend/Family Member/Arch-nemesis/Etc questions)

If you need help typing yourself, at least one (and frequently several) of the following is in play

1. You need help with understanding MBTI

a. In terms of the actual theory

b. In terms of how it shows up in the real world

2. You need help with understanding yourself

a. In terms of understanding what is your personality and what is just being a person.

b. In terms of accurately assessing your skill level and tendencies

So often I need to both type you and address that question.

If I can’t figure out the question you need answered, AND there isn’t information that’s useful for typing, then I can’t really do anything other than say “please provide more information.” If on the other hand you do provide information I can use to type you, even if I’m not sure where your source of confusion was, I can provide a typing.

Similarly, if I can figure out the question, even if you don’t have information I can use to type you, I might be able to help. So here’s how I address the questions

1.a. This is a theory question, which we already covered, but it includes a request for help in typing. Ideally you provided information about yourself that is conducive to typing help, but if you didn’t, I can direct you to resources or provide some clarity so that you can try typing yourself with that new information.

1.b. If you provided information about yourself, this is great - I can talk about your real-world behavior and how it relates back to how I’ve typed you, thus providing more people with examples of real-world behavior. If you didn’t provide information about yourself, this is more of a “what does X type look like” and it’s a bad question. Yes, I know this is frustrating, but the fact is there is a very wide range of possibilities of what X type can look like.

For both parts of question 2: if you don’t describe yourself well, it’s game over. I can’t do anything, because the (main) issue isn’t that you need help with understanding MBTI to type yourself; you need help understanding yourself, and I don’t know you other than what you provide in the question.

2.a. This is again a case of ‘if you’re young and have limited experience, socialize a little and wait and try typing again in a couple years.’ But no matter what, please try to interact with people more, take a neuro or psych class, log off for a bit, and generally get some kind of sense that most people are more invested in their interests than in boring tasks, act differently with their parents than with their peers, or whatever. Meet a person. You know how they said you can make more friends by being interested in other people than trying to get other people interested in you? You can learn more about your personality by learning about other people than spending time alone on the internet.

2.b. This is fair. This is an acknowledgement that objectivity about one’s self is really hard. This is also why stereotypical MBTI descriptions are pretty useless, because instead of letting me, a third-party who doesn’t really know you, try to assess your skills, you’re just saying “I’m great at reading people”. So if you’re trying to ask this kind of question, it is absolutely vital that you provide the best description you can. Put a modicum of effort into it. Draft a question in Google Docs and edit it to make sense instead of saying “sorry if this doesn’t make sense”.

[sorbriquette]

Tagged by @basic-banshee Thank you Ban <3

1. How did you begin writing? I was writing from childhood. My primary school tutor was really encouraging so I started posting fanfic on FF.net illegally at like age 9. It was bad. When I was about 13 I started doing online RP and fell in with a group of brilliant people who helped me keep that up for YEARS and is kinda how I got into writing properly, not my shitty childhood fanfic. 

2. What was your first writing project? Tell us a little about it. Like I said, shitty childhood fanfic. First legit project though would probably be last years NaNoWriMo (where you write 50k in a month). I wrote the first draft of a high fantasy kinda thing I’m working on but like the entire plot of that has been scrapped and I’m starting from scratch this year so...

3. What is your preferred medium for writing first drafts? Oh, I use ywriter 5 (link here) it’s like a free program that lets you write (without a spell check importantly so I don’t stop) and like add in like character and location and item tabs so you can keep track of what and who appears in the story and what each scene fulfills and shit. Imma shut up before this turns into an add but it’s really good and yall should check it out (even if I basically just use the POV system myself)

4. What rituals or habits do you have around writing? 

I don’t really have any I don’t think? For me it’s kinda just sit down and go for as long as I’ve got the motivation. Usually late at night admittedly but yeah there’s nothing particularly consistent about the way I write.

5. We all have a “type”– of character, plot, theme– what is yours? I feel called out. 

Probably wit though. Across all my characters RP, actual story, weves, I like the snarky asshole ones. I’m weak for that banter. 

Also kinda both theme/character: good characters bore the shit out of me. I like ‘em morally grey or immoral and as such I write a lot about the subjective nature of morality in my original shit.

6. Introduce us to one (or more!) of your OC’s. Right so my current original shit has 6 mains and asking me to choose between them is inhumane so you get the 4 starting ones and the other two will remain a mystery.

Ren --> Brings a knife to a gun fight because ‘you gotta live life on hard mode’, makes bad choices for fun, stupidly reckless, very loyal but issues with authority. Military deserter turned pirate. Unofficial leader of this band of misfits. 

Marcel --> Brings 2 knives to a gun fight because he is both a follower and coward. Just here for a laff and a taste of freedom. Prince of a country but does not want to rule. Falls in love with the first man who pays attention to him. Alignment is chaotic dumbass.

Kia --> Supposed to be the party thief but ‘it’s easier to loot a corpse than pick a pocket’. An actual proper coward, will leave everyone else to die if it saves her. Can’t take anything seriously. Tries to life-hack everything. Thinks murder is the solution to everything. 

Corvus --> Absolute pacifist regardless of the danger. RLLY into blackmail (and plants). Lowkey the token evil teammate. Perpetually rolling his eyes. Makes all the plans and then gets salty when no one follows them. Would sell you to Satan for one corn chip.

7. What’s your favorite genre to read? FANTASY! Which is why, despite only really writing fic for Carry On, I’ve not actually read any of Rainbow Rowell’s other work. Contemporary romance doesn’t really interest me.

Also I’m weak for anything featuring like crime, but the criminals doing the crime, not the crime solving. 

8. Your favorite genre to write? Fantasy again! Both high and low but with a preference for high because I like to world build. 

9. How do you conduct your authorial research? LMAO what?

Like I said I like to write high fantasy so I don’t so much research as like to perpetually learn and incorporating things I like in. 

10. What does your editing (gasp) process look like? So in 3. I said ywriter doesn’t have spell check? For fanfic I give it a cursory read over and fix anything glaring, then I copy it into word and use spellcheck and also grammarly. Then to the betas for the final round (I should do more but also?? Just fanfic)

My NaNo project tho? Never got edited at all. 

11. What are your favorite tropes? BRuh I love all the tropes. I am WEaK for tropes. So trimming down to the favs:

I have a weird thing for catagorising so I love me some Cast Calculus

I try but never quite succeed with Blue and Orange Morality

Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking barely counts but I love it

A comedic Rashomon  AKA that thing where everyone is being interrogated and they all tell completely different stories

I high key love a Magnificent Bastard in any form

And I mean a nice round five would have been good but how can one resist a Deadpan Snarker

Also I don’t think this is what I was meant to do for this segment but I enjoyed it so wevs

12. Show off your writing space. ABSOLUTELY NOT MY ROOM IS A MESS

13. What is the most useful piece of writing advice you’ve ever used? Don’t write for anyone but yourself. Write what you want to read. 

I know it’s been said a multitude of times but idk the first time it really resonated with me was when VE Schwab mentioned it. I can’t find the source but I think she was quoting someone, soz!

14. What is the least useful piece of writing advice you’ve ever ignored? Write what you know.

Like get fucked? What I know is fucking boring. Let me write what I can imagine. 

And though I don’t consider it real writing advice cause it was just 1 dumbass post on pinterest I saw one time “when writing a woman's pov make it more about emotions than a males. Her emotions, other peoples emotions’ etc. etc. Basically a load of shit. Don’t write a gender, write a fucking character. 

15. Your writing beverage/snack of choice? I drink a lot of tea but it usually goes cold. 

16. How do you compile your ideas? I don’t mostly, it’s a bad habit. Sometimes I drop stuff in my phone for fanfic or I have a couple of pocket sized leather note books I used to carry around for my original shit. 

But mainly it’s just left in my head to get forgotten :\

17. What are your controversial opinions ™ on the craft of writing? I’m about to get crucified but here goes:

Writing isn’t hard. 

Originally and concepts and stringing together a proper story? Yeah it’s a challenge. But just writing? Nah. not for me at least. If I’m sitting in front of a blank word document it’s because I have a problem with the scene. It doesn’t happen that often but when it does I find the best thing to do is go back and redo the sequence because going off no 13. It probably means I’m not interested in the scene. 

But that’s just my opinion so please extinguish your torches and put down the pitchforks.

Tagging: @mydamnsunshine @thatsbitchcraft and any of my mutals who write. Chances are if you haven’t been tagged I thought you already had so go ahead and consider urself tagged. 

[dramarising-replacement]

A Rant On How To Actually Run A Pet Sim.

DISCLAIMER: I love Flight Rising, it’s been one of, and still is a favorite game of mine. This rant is simply trying to bring light that the staff could be doing much better in running the site that they are. With recent issues such as the long ban appeal process, and that one time that Unicorn admin said “nothing is wrong with our gem paypal stuff” when everyone was CLEARLY having issues, I wanted to voice my opinion.

I’ve played a LOT of pet sims. Most recently, Flight Rising, Novilar (not really gonna talk about this one, it’s meh, it only recently started up, it’s definitely unique), and Lioden.

I’ve been on FR since 2014 and I thought it was the SHIT. Little 13 year old me was piss pants excited to keep a crapton of pretty dragons (who actually weren’t that pretty) and expand my clan into the stars!

Now I’m a bit more bitter about FR after seeing what other sites have to offer in terms of a unique experience.

RANT PART ONE: The wait for new breeds on Flight Rising.

At first, I completely understood the reasoning for why breeds took so long to come out. They had to do all the genes, color, and apparel for both genders of dragon!!

I’m not denying that FR has a wide, wide list of apparels (Upon checking the Flight rising database, it’s around 2000 pieces of apparel) I’m saying that other sites do it much better.

The site I’m comparing Flight Rising to is Lioden. Here is a small sample of some of the decor items they have on site, keep in mind that list hasn’t been updated since 2015.

ALSO! BACKGROUNDS! ANOTHER WONDERFUL THING FR DOESN’T HAVE.

My point here is that the Lioden staff drew apparel for the regular male pose, the regular female pose, 6 other female poses, and 4 cub poses.

However, this point runs dry when you realize that the mutations don’t get fitted apparel (sad trombone noise) (Lioden has mutations where occasionally, giving birth to a cub will result in a mutation, this can be anything from blindness, to the 3 primal mutations, all of which have separate linearts)

There are two types of apparel, in both Lioden and Flight rising: Universal and Fitted. 

Universal apparel on Flight rising are things like the Emblems, The Flowerfalls, the ugly crowns, something you can copypaste onto another pose. Fitted apparel is something that’s drawn SPECIFICALLY on, such as the lace apparel. On Lioden, while the primal mutations can’t wear fitted decor, they can wear universal decor.

So point for Flight Rising, right? They draw all of the apparel onto all of the breeds!

No fucking excuse for me, in the 2 years from nocturne to bogsneak, they had every chance to perfect making all of the apparel.

When Bogsneak comes out? HALF OF THE APPAREL IS FUCKING BROKEN FOR THE BREED. AND A LOT OF IT STILL ISN’T FIXED TODAY.

Bullshit to the excuse of “eeeuughg we gotta do every apparel for both dragon poses uwu” when a shit ton of the apparel doesn’t even work.

At least on Lioden, they’re honest. They say “we’re not going to be drawing fitted apparel for the mutations.”

BUT, GUESS WHAT? If you have an apparel for a mutation you want? YOU CAN DRAW IT YOURSELF. Even better? IT’S HALF THE PRICE OF A SKIN BLUEPRINT ON FLIGHT RISING.

EVEN BETTER? IF IT GETS REJECTED, YOU GET THE ITEM BACK TO GIVE IT ANOTHER SHOT!!!

Alright, so, how about markings/genes?

Well considering that Lioden has 900+ markings, I think they win just a little bit. And guess what? 

Lioden doesn’t always have all the markings for their mutations done either.

But they’re transparent!

https://static.lioden.com/images/arttutorials/mutationstatus.html

this is literally a link to their current progress with the markings.

They released two new mutations (With new, complete linearts to a total of 3) WITHIN FUCKING MONTHS OF EACH OTHER.

FLIGHT RISING TOOK TWO YEARS TO RELEASE ONE BREED WITH HALF THE SHIT BEING BROKEN FOR IT! 

IT’S FINE IF YOU TAKE A LONG TIME TO RELEASE SOMETHING, JUST DON’T SHOVE THAT “We’re perfecting everything” BULLSHIT DOWN OUR THROATS. And if I recall, some of the genes were broken as well on bogs but lol let’s not get into that.

Some of the comparisons might seem a bit odd since the two pet sims I’m comparing have completely different systems/art styles, but I’m just saying that if they were honest about taking so much time releasing a half broken breed, it shines a light on how shoddy their site management is. Hire more artists, artists that don’t leave a good chunk of the apparel glitched.

And now, for the second part of this absurdly long rant.

PART TWO: THE STAFF.

On Flight Rising, the staff is often solid and machine like, half of the updates feel fucking soulless because they’re all formatted the same way. Aside from the ‘ask the team’ segments, which barely fucking happen anymore, we rarely interact with the staff.

Maybe not for other people, but for me SPECIFICALLY this makes it really hard to sympathize with the FR staff (particularly I’m referring to the admins with this). They feel distant, and a lot of the times they respond to comments (particularly backlash and criticism) is to be snarky. While this would be funny normally, when you literally never interact with your audience, don’t listen to them, and don’t RESPOND to them, when you act like a snarky shit it’s gonna make you look condescending.

Again, on Lioden, the admins, frequently, FREQUENTLY come into the chat to mingle with the players. While there they answer questions, share experiences, and are genuinely pleasant to be around, it makes you feel a lot more sympathy for them when shit goes down the drain.

Back to the custom decor/apparel again, there was a forum post where people would post their in progress pictures, and one of the admins would respond with how to improve/ change it. When staff goes out of their way to do something they don’t have to it makes a really big impression on the player base.

For those of you holding on still, god bless you, have a kitten.

PART THREE: USER INTERACTION 

So, one of Flight Rising’s biggest flops is how they interact with users, and how users interact with them.

The three big separate issues here are mainly:

Ban appeals.

User suggestions.

And helping users.

The ban appeals, or really contacting staff about fucking anything is a ridiculous process. We’ve heard the stories on here about how long some users have been waiting for someone to address the issue, let alone solve it. 

I shouldn’t even need to compare this to anything, in my opinion the wait times are just stupid. If I can walk to FR headquarters in wherever the hell they are faster then they can respond to an issue online? THAT’S BAD.

User suggestions are rarely implemented or looked at, and if they are implemented, we have no fucking clue. It doesn’t matter how much support a topic gets, the staff rarely ever listens.

Back to Lioden, almost WEEKLY people are credited for new suggestions that are implemented into the game, and while the changes are noticeable, it’s gradual enough to that it doesn’t feel jarring. It’s fucking awesome!

Also on Lioden, there’s a 'support/no support’ button that you can click to easily, quantifiably see what users want and don’t want.

Lastly, helping users.

FR staff follows HARD RULES, there is no room for improvement. Accidentally exalt a dragon? You’re fucked. A lot of FR’s rules boil down to 'we won’t help you if you mess up’ which, if you think about it, is what incites a lot of begging onsite (oh no i accidentally transmuted my light sprite some1 pls help ;n;)

On Lioden, if you make an honest mistake, they will help you

I’m not saying that Lioden is better than Flight Rising, all I’m saying is that Flight Rising has a lot of improvement it could be doing; Giving us transparency, honesty, treating us like people instead of a cashgrab.

A lot of these problems would be fixed by one thing:

Better communication.

I wouldn’t mind if Bogsneak took two years if instead of saying “We need to do EVERYTHING on this breed” and releasing it half broken, they instead said “It isn’t a priority for us right now” and actually taken their time.

I wouldn’t mind the cut/paste updates if the staff weren’t so distant.

And the user interaction could be a lot better, if Flight Rising acted less like a company, and more like a person.

Not to say that structure is bad, everything has to, and will have rules.

But if Flight Rising cared a little more, or ACTED like it, it would make the site magnitudes better.

[chocolate-brownies]

Explore what digital detox can mean for you—and the world at large—at Wellspring.

I talk a big game when it comes to mindfulness. In the yoga classes I teach, as well as in conversations with friends, I find myself ranting about the evils of digital devices and social media. And yet I also increasingly catch myself reaching for my phone before getting out of bed in the morning. I obsessively watch every Instagram story in my feed. The sound of a notification, any notification, sets my heart racing with both anticipation and anxiety. It’s a hard truth, but an important one to admit: I am addicted to my devices. Can you relate?

They say that admitting you have a problem is the first step to solving it, a colloquialism I conveniently kept forgetting to follow with a second step. But my dependence has reached unhealthy levels—I’m sleeping poorly and unable to focus on simple tasks, like reading, without “checking in.” It’s time for a hard reset. I’m digitally detoxing for seven whole days, and will document my progress in a journal—that is, assuming I don’t collapse from withdrawal.

Here are the rules:

No personal social media, whatsoever. I can use social media for my job (I manage my yoga studio’s Instagram account) between the hours of 8am and 4pm.

Professional email only between the hours of 8am and 4pm.

No convenience apps (Venmo, Uber, etc.).

Try hard.

Be honest.

Day One

I’m a mess today. I attended a 108 festival in Santa Monica this weekend and flew back home on a red-eye. Disaster. I’m bleary-eyed, nauseous, and totally out of it. The only thing I want to do is binge on Netflix for hours, but I’m pretty sure that mindlessly staring at a screen would be a bad way to kick things off. I consider an online restorative class, but that requires a computer. They make everything so easy, and yet do they really fulfill our needs? I turn my phone off completely, pull down the window shades, drape my body over a bolster, and consider myself dead to the world.

When it’s time for bed, I find myself antsy to the point of clenching my jaw. It’s been almost 24 hours since I checked WhatsApp for messages, and I’m worried I’ll ��miss” something. But what could be so important that it’d be sent via WhatsApp at 10 pm on a Wednesday night? I go to bed. 

Day Two

I’m still jet-lagged, but feeling more excited about the detox. As I go about my routine, I catch myself reaching for my phone dozens of times before noon. Literally dozens. This is not good. Each time, I ask myself: What were you planning on doing with it? The answer, I admit sheepishly, is always the same: Instagram.

I decide to dig a little deeper and explore why I feel the need to check IG, and I realize it isn’t out of boredom or curiosity. I notice that the common denominator in each of these close calls is that just before I grab my cell, I have begun to get a little anxiety about deadlines, my career, my hopeless singledom… Turns out, I’m straight-up trying to avoid feelings that oh-so-inconveniently keep creeping in. I decide to make a new rule: Every time I want to avoid a hard emotion by cruising the web, I have to sit, close my eyes, and feel the feels for two minutes. I do a lot of eyes-shut-sitting this week.

Day Three

Well, it had to happen sooner or later. I was working on an article, and I must have blacked out for a sec, because when I “woke up” I was seven images deep on my Instagram newsfeed. Let me reiterate this: I actually opened a new tab on my browser, navigated to Instagram, and started scrolling without realizing that I was doing so.

Apparently I also scroll for procrastination purposes. This was a theme that would recur again and again throughout the week: The second I felt stuck or bored or distracted by whatever I was working on, I would click open a new tab and start to type either “Insta…” or “Twitt…” or “Face…” Cruising around social media sites is my favorite form of postponing a dreaded task, a fact that Mark Zuckerberg would love but my editors would hate. I didn’t cure myself of the urge this week, but I did catch myself in the act earlier and earlier.

Day Four

This is a tough one to share. I realized today that, in addition to texting and IRL chats, one of the main ways I stay in touch with my girlfriends is to swap snarky comments via DM about people we hate-follow on social media. Ugh—it sucks to admit it, and it sucks even more that I do it. Gossip is a huge part of our society’s culture; I’ll even go so far as to say it’s how we’ve been trained to communicate with each other. But that doesn’t make it right.

I realized I was missing the daily lol moments from my best gal pal’s razor-sharp takedowns, and that’s when I first acknowledged the deeper issue. We have so much in common: We both love to cook, teach yoga, and are passionate about wellness. We have zillions of things to talk about and do together. Connecting and fostering a sense of closeness through this social media snark just feels cheap. And lazy. This one is an easy fix: We made plans to meet for tea, and shared an hour of substantial, thoughtful conversation. I left our date feeling refreshed, not guilty and dirty.

Day Five

Okay, I’ve definitely gotten over my withdrawal symptoms and have entered the euphoria stage. I made plans to go out with my parents to celebrate my mother’s birthday, and I had a tight turnaround from my shift at the yoga studio to the time of our dinner reservations. Normally, this type of situation would stress me out as I attempted to take care of my dog, get dressed, and get out the door, but today I felt a sense of lightness. I practically skipped out of my apartment with my cell set to airplane mode. What changed? I’m pretty sure it’s the fact that I had officially crossed “Check Instagram” off my to-do list.

Let me explain: Once again, I’m blushing so hard I’m turning red, but my addiction has roots so deep that I have convinced myself scrolling through random people’s feeds is a necessary step in getting ready to leave the house. It isn’t just a time suck: The real problem is that I’ve placed undue importance on the minutiae of someone else’s life over my own. My voice says that attention and presence are important, but my actions say that what celebrity yoga teachers ate for lunch is more so. I decide to banish my cell from the “getting ready” process from here on out, and lean into the itchy “but I just wanna know” feeling that comes with my abstinence.

Day Six

Last week, while I was on vacation in another state, my folks had my aunt and uncle over for a meal. I knew this not because I was invited or because my mom told me. I knew because my aunt posted pictures on Facebook. This got me thinking how much of my friends’ and family’s life updates I glean from stalking — instead of talking. I’ve learned about my network’s pregnancies, deaths, and engagements through social media, and I’ve definitely shared big news (a book deal, a move, a new job) of my own through the platforms.

I used to tell myself that social updates were simply the most efficient means of reaching the most people all at once, but the more I think about it, the more I’m wondering: Why is it important to reach the most people all at once? If it’s a major life event we’re dealing with, shouldn’t I want to discuss it with personal, face-to-face interactions? And if it’s a boring detail not worth a real conversation, does it really need to be shared? I’ve considered social networks a huge part of my social life for the last ten years, and I’m not going to lie… I’m having an existential crisis over here.

Day Seven

It’s the last day of my digital detox, and I’ve reached a calmer, clearer place by actually engaging with the physical space I’m in. Instead of jumping up to cook dinner, do a final email sweep, and crush the last few items on my to-do list, I spent a few minutes after meditation this evening simply looking around my apartment. Did the light always look so beautiful this time of day? Had my ceilings always been that pretty? They’re REALLY pretty. Have I seriously lived here for four months without noticing them?

I’m suddenly aware of how often I pass time in restaurants, cafés, and parks without looking around. Why? Because my face is buried in my cell. Of course. I became hyper-aware of my own behavior patterns this week as I watched diners whip out their devices the second their dates got up to use the restroom, and I observed people moving forward in a line while scrolling until the second they reached their destination. I made a conscious effort to look up, look around, and spend time observing the buildings, furniture, decorations, and people surrounding me. It’s definitely a practice I’m going to carry with me when this experiment is over.

Parting Thoughts

This was one of the hardest things I’ve done. It wasn’t an issue of willpower; what made this detox challenging was being honest with myself about how unhealthy my addiction has become. There’s no way I was going to undo a decade of learned behavior in the course of a week, but what I will take with me is a clear awareness of my patterns and triggers. So that was step one. Step two is examining this new self-awareness with kindness, patience, and forgiveness.

Will I toss my cell out of my third-floor window? Definitely not. But I absolutely am going to scale back, check in less, and employ mindfulness tactics in my social media and technology usage. I tell my yoga students to play at their edge of discomfort, but not to live in extremes. What better advice than that for living in a digital age?

—

Rochelle Bilow is a yoga teacher and wellness writer based in Upstate New York. She’s an advocate for body positivity and healthy attitudes toward food and spends the majority of her free time concocting feel-good recipes. She’s also a nature nut and proud corgi mom. Connect with her at her website and on Instagram.

1

The post This 7-Day Digital Detox Was the Hardest (and Best) Thing I’ve Ever Done appeared first on Wanderlust.