no social media.

Once upon a time, I was present enough to enjoy gazing off into a corner of my bedroom  after opening my eyes first thing in the morning, and thanking GOD for another day of life. I might still be half-sleep but I would relish in the beauty and perfection of the decor that 13 year old me would be so proud of. This is my reality as of lately.  I’m mindful and I’m grateful in these quiet moments of solitude as I stretch  my limbs in my dangerously cozy queen size bed on a late august summer morning.. If I haven’t prayed already, I do that, then I’ll read scripture, followed by my current novel of choice and finally roll out of bed to begin my day.  It might sound like a typical morning to most but it was foreign to me a few monthss ago, when routinely, I grab my phone and start checking my socials like it’s crack or something in it before brushing my teeth. I fell off from that horrible routine earlier this year but noticed myself relapsing  when I was terminated from my job earlier this summer.  I thank GOD for my internal addiction meterbecause when it went off, I knew it was time for me to take a step back.

Social Media is disturbing and I have a crazy love-hate relationship with that broad. She tries to be my friend but then she just becomes extremely dramatic and way too clingy. She throws me off. She also repeatedly introduces me to ignorant, misinformed, out of touch, unaware, and misplaced people that live in a completely different world than I. On the contrary she gives me a high like no other. She gives me the attention I desire from the opposite sex and she goes out of her way to only show the good sides of me. Yet, I’ve been really good without her for the past 40 something days.

Ofcourse I miss the instant gratification of being in the “know” of what my girlfriends have going on and I miss my internet love affairs that consisted of my favorite eye candy hearting my stories every now and then… making my day and my post worthy of the fantasies my imagination would create that surely followed. My levels of delusion have reached record highs on the gram.

Twitter- a pool of toxicity. Now adays, I’d rather chew on glass than to read the thoughts of people on that platform. Interesting enough, I realized when my temperament is the lowest, I have the strongest desires to tweet. Nobody likes a negative nancy and my desire to emotionally bleed all over someones timeline hasn’t served me or the greater good of humanity so I tend to retreat. Since we’re on the subject, I wish my sistas felt the same convictions… 

On Tik Tok, I had an argument with a girl who was mad that I didn’t want to hold Nipsey Hussle or Tupac accountable for being “thugs” – as if that’s all they did in their lifetimes. Ol’ girl turned it into a debate about how she’s tired of women like me not holding men accountable. I simply told her only acknowledging a mans shortcomings rather than praising his acts of GODliness is very wicked work and then I told her to be blessed. I wanted it to be a teachable moment and go into detail of the various things both men did for their communities and black enterprise but it wasn’t my responsibility to educate her on Gods world wide web. Google is a click away. But occurrences as such truly have me flabbergasted a little too often. It makes me want to stay away from algorithms all together until my work is making a difference and making a profit. People are weird.

This break came out of convenience since I’ve been hibernating in my apartment for the last three months, preparing for my next season. But I know if I had brought my Instagram along for this ride, my mental health would have probably been tainted and compromised by outside influences. It’s all so very weird when you remove yourself from it. We really are conditioning ourselves to experience highs brought to us by something that could be gone tomorrow. I’m still a head-ass at heart so I can’t promise that I wont fall back into its trap after I pop out for my birthday in 37 days but for now… I’m determined to build the muscle that will prevent me from crossing swords with that distraction.