Gabby Blair recently realized that she was losing hours and hours of her day to her social media obsession. So last month she took the plunge and quit social media for a full 30 days. Gabby found that without the temptation of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, she was instead able to fill that time with all her other stupid bullshit.
“I was sick of letting a phone waste all my time,” said Gabby. “It was time to take back control and waste it all myself.”
Gabby says she had been struggling to appreciate her life offline, transfixed by the rush of one more click. So she made a choice. After sharing two enigmatic tweets, a farewell selfie, and a final Facebook status send-off, Gabby bravely deactivated.
Quitting social media was hard at first, but she was resilient. With all her newly unoccupied time, she picked up various useless hobbies like crocheting and doing those sad adult coloring books.
And before she knew it, Gabby found time was filling itself. She discovered a whole host of lost causes, from trying all the various free moisturizer samples she’d accumulated over the years to shaving her legs daily. “All that effort I’d poured into trying to impress acquaintances online was now available to spend worrying about what fleeting strangers in real life thought of me,” Gabby recounts.
Incredible!
Gabby started regularly painting her toenails, only to cover them with boots at work. “Sometimes I would just stare at my face for hours, wondering what else was wrong with it.”
Gabby tapped into a whole new reserve of mental energy, which she could now use to spiral into fits of despair that weren’t about other people’s brunch photos. Free from Facebook events, she started saying yes to all the direct invites that came her way, which proved to be a real time-suck.
“I went to my neighbor’s kid’s dance recital. It ended up being three hours long,” Gabby recounts.
Now that her 30 days are over, Gabby is taking the lessons she learned with her.
“I didn’t miss social media at all. Now I just directly call people, which wastes just as much time as social media,” Gabby explains.
Bon voyage, Gabby! You’re an inspiration!
