Since I didn’t release a blog post as usual last Friday, I’m coming to you mid-week with a bonus post!
As I wrote in my last post, I am prioritizing friends and family this year. My mom fractured her tibia (the larger of the two bones in the leg) right before the holidays. Since she lives alone, my brother and I have been taking turns staying with her and helping take care of her while she recovers. One of the benefits of my remote job is that I can work from anywhere! So, I spent last week in my childhood home helping my mom, and it brought me so much joy. This is what financial freedom is all about for me.
Anyway, if you can even believe it, today is the last day of January! With January being a month all about goals for me, I’ve been reflecting on some of the ones I set in previous years. And one of these past goals was to give up Facebook.
I’ve written in the past about how I set my goals, and one of the steps I take is to reflect on the previous year and how those goals went. When I did this exercise this year, I couldn’t believe it, but I realized that it’s been 2 years now since I made it a goal to give up Facebook!
At the time, this goal sort of just came to me out of nowhere. I had been on a slow FI journey for a year or two at that point. I had gotten off the hamster wheel, and was working in a job where, for the first time, I had all this time in my day. I wasn’t thinking about work 24/7. And I was actively trying to de-identify myself from my job.
When I was still on the hamster wheel, I had so little time to myself. When I did find myself with any time of my own, I was used to mindlessly scrolling through social media. Being a solid millennial, born in 1987, Facebook was my social media of choice.
What changed
As I slowed down, as I de-identified myself from work, I realized I had so much more time in my day. But I wasn’t as good at utilizing my time as I am now. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with all that time. And instead of figuring out what I wanted to do to fill my time, I found myself complaining that I didn’t have enough.
I remember when I went to set my goals for that year, I had this a-ha moment. I realized that I did have the time, I just wasn’t maximizing it or utilizing it well. For example, I would be done with work by 5 (or sometimes even before because of how efficiently I was working), and Mr. Dink and I don’t typically start cooking dinner until 6.
I realized that I did nothing productive during that one-hour block. I would come downstairs, lay on the couch, and scroll Facebook and play Candy Crush, the things that used to bring me comfort when I was stressed out to the max about work and just wanted to take my mind off things. I noticed that whenever I had time for myself, I would grab for my phone, because it was habit. And the habit was almost always Facebook.
I realized I needed to break that habit.
But it wasn’t only about the habit. Another reason I was on Facebook was about the comparison. I was at a point in my life where most of my friends from childhood and from college were all spread out across the country. The major way we “kept in touch” was through Facebook. But it wasn’t really keeping in touch. It was seeing how everyone else was doing and comparing my own life to theirs. It didn’t make me feel good.
In this great article I read the other day, the author references psychologist Jonathan Haidt who says that “people don’t communicate on social media, they perform for one another.” And the author goes on to talk about how Montesquieu wrote 275 years ago that “if you only wished to be happy, this could easily be accomplished. But we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.”
Because I was starting to do meditation around the same time, I was becoming much more aware of the present moment, and I was noticing that my mental health wasn’t at it’s best. I was no longer mindlessly scrolling Facebook, I was mindfully scrolling Facebook. And I didn’t like what I was noticing.
So I decided to take action.
My goal started with just 30 days. I would give up Facebook for 30 days, or 1 month. So I wouldn’t be tempted, I deleted the app from my phone and my iPad. I knew I didn’t care enough to seek it out, so I didn’t need to deactivate my account. I just needed to make it impossible for me to carry out the habit I’d done for so long: open the Facebook app when I picked up my phone.
It worked like a charm. I checked in with myself after 1 month, and I didn’t miss Facebook at all. I decided to keep going.
It was the best decision I ever made. No one seemed to care that I wasn’t on Facebook (well, besides my mom), liking and posting like I used to (which fuels the theory that Facebook is more about performing than actual connection). Now, when I think about someone, instead of hopping on social media and seeing how they’re doing (or, better yet, what they want the world to know they’re doing), I reach out to them via text and check-in. We end up having a much more meaningful conversation that way (well, at least in my opinion).
A crossroads
It had been one year and 2 months since quitting Facebook when I decided to start this blog. One of my biggest fears around embarking on this blogging journey was in dealing with social media. I knew I would need to (and I wanted to!) go back online to become a contributing member of this community in a way that I felt good about. But I had also done so much good work on myself and my social media habits. Ultimately, I was confident that I could reemerge in the world of social media in a way that worked for me.
How I make it work for me
This blog is important to me, and I knew I wanted to be involved in the personal finance community and actually interact with my readership, whatever that might entail. I knew about the Slow FI Enthusiasts Facebook group started by The Fioneers, and I really wanted to be a part of that. So, I took steps to bring Facebook back into my life but in an intentional way.
I tried a couple of times to limit myself to a certain timeframe that I could be on social media, but I found that I didn’t want this limitation. When you’re first starting a blog, it’s exciting to be a member of the community and connect with other creators, so I felt it was too restrictive to limit my total time spent on Facebook. Instead, I’m just mindful of what I’m actually doing on the platform.
I did end up reinstalling the apps on my phone (note: not on my iPad), but this was more for convenience. Unlike before where I didn’t want to reach for my phone out of habit if I had a few minutes, now I wanted to be able to log onto social media for the purposes of interacting with the personal finance community if I had a few minutes, and it was too much of a hassle to lug my personal computer around all the time just for this purpose.
I only check certain things when I’m logged in
I have certain groups that I’ve joined for the purposes of my blog. For example, in addition to the Slow FI Enthusiasts group I mentioned above, there are also other groups where I can share my content and interact with fellow bloggers. When I’m actively on Facebook, I spend most of my time in those groups.
Of course, I see my friends’ posts at the top of my feed when I open the app. I will look at the first few posts, which are often things I actually want to see (updates from my friends and family), but as soon as I’ve scrolled past anything relevant and am starting to see ads and things unrelated to posts from friends and family, I close the app or move on to the groups I want to interact with.
I check in with myself
I currently have a goal to post on Instagram once a week and publish a blog post once a week. I have been pretty good about publishing a blog post once a week, but the Instagram posts have been less consistent. This is mostly because I’m listening to my mind, body, and spirit, and going where the wind takes me. If something else is more important that week, I don’t post. If nothing comes to mind to post that will benefit the community, I don’t post. If it feels better for my mental health to stay off social media that week, I do it. And this works because…
I don’t take myself too seriously
I didn’t start this blog to make money. I don’t want to have my own business. On the one hand, this makes me feel different and isolated from some content creators. On the other hand, I think we’re all just doing something that we love. We all want to have a voice in this world and be a contributing member of something greater than ourselves. Isn’t that all anyone really wants, anyway? To belong? Thank you for letting me belong to this community.
What’s something you’ve given up in the past? Have you stuck with it? How are you feeling about your goals for 2023? Let me know in the comments; I’d love to hear from you!