Social Media Sabbatical

Social media has become a way for us to connect to others easier and more often. We are able to reconnect with long lost friends, family who we don't see often, and we are even able to help our businesses. And all of these things are great and I love how technology has allowed us to be able to do these things. I love being able to see what's going on with my friends and family, I love being able to blog to get my story and thoughts out there to help others, I love being able to share my blog on three different social media sites to reach even more people.

But, somewhere along the way I think many of us, including myself, social media has become our life. Examples of social media are: blogging, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Podcasts, Google+, YouTube, and even just your every day e-mail. And these are just the few I can think of off the top of my head. Yesterday I made the comment to someone, "If you need anything or have questions, shoot me a FB message, e-mail, text, or call me. I get all the alerts on my phone." And not only all the social media, but I have my other apps on my phone, including my music. There are times when I'm laying there, lights out, music on, and I'm in the middle of my meditation and I'll get an alert. When this happens, I don't even look at the alerts, but the issue is that the purpose of meditating is to be completely in your thoughts and away from distraction. How effective is my meditation if my thoughts are being interrupted every time a social media alert goes off? And I don't know if it's because this has been a long week, or if my social media just happen to be getting a lot of activity at that moment, but I was recently meditating and it seemed like alerts were just going off every 30 seconds to a minute. I was getting pissed and ended up ripping the headphones off and shutting my phone off.

But, this got me thinking about social media and how it plays a part in my life. The social medias I use daily are Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, my blog, and e-mail; then a few others from time to time. Don't get me wrong, social media is awesome and I'm still going to use my sources to stay connected with the world, but just like anything if it becomes your life it can be distracting. This morning's meditation ended up being over social media in my life and have decided to take a social media sabbatical for the weekend. What does that mean? It means this is my last post from me on any of my social media forms until Monday, nor will I be getting on any of them to get updates. I'm still going to do what I had planned to do this weekend, workout tomorrow morning, present my carb cycling seminar, start planning and prepping for next week's meals, go to church Sunday, my Empire forms, and do everything else I normally do that doesn't involve social media. I figured those friends and family who really need me or need anything can call me because they have my phone number; and any social media updates will still be there Monday once I've returned. I want social media in my life to help stay connected with friends, family, and even to be able to help others through my blog; but what I don't want is it to become my life or a distraction in my life. So, everyone have an awesome weekend!