Coming Back to Social
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When I went to Sweden over the Christmas holidays, I stayed away from my phone for most of the time. This wasn’t planned at all, but somehow just happened. I had very little motivation on checking, posting or even reading anything. Twitter, Instagram or any kind of news were not important nor interesting and I rarely read or posted anything. It was simply nice to be in the silent middle of nowhere, unwinding away.
The January somehow stayed the same. When I got back to Hong Kong, I thought I’d be shocked by the difference in noise levels, but it wasn’t as bad as I though it would be. Adjusting was easy and I smoothly got back into the daily grind. But I still wasn’t in the mood to engage in any social media. I decided to stay low with little engagement for the month being and got productive working on some fun projects.
Now that it is February, I decided to come back and be more social again, but I will do so more selectively for sure. Over the last weeks I talked to many friends and without wanting to be too dramatic here, there’s something to the whole “always-on-engagement-thing”. The article “How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation” has been a great read and a sort of eye-opener in many ways. I also believe that this issue doesn’t only concern millennials, but rather everyone who’s been on the web and social media for some time. The article has resonated with a lot of people that I have spoken to and many of them, like myself, don’t fall into the millennial bracket. I’m a little curious and a little scared at the same time to see what long-term effects the exciting, beautiful, weird and busy web might have on us people.
Long story short, since I’ve been more selective about the social when, where and whats, stopped reading news (which these days mostly is just just noise for advertising money anyways) almost completely, I have noticed that I feel less stressed, can concentrate better, get more stuff done and am more productive again. And this is definitely a good outcome that wasn’t planned. I like it.
Let’s see how it’ll go from today on and here’s to hopefully more blogging, more opinions, more engagement and a little more Rock’n’Roll in general while staying sane. Happy February!