Getting off the Grid (Sort of...)

Over the past week or so, I deleted my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram accounts.

GULP!  AAAGGGHHH!

It's fine.  I'm fine.

The first two, Facebook and Twitter, were relatively easy break-ups for me. Because of the truly scary privacy concerns I have regarding the tech giants who control them, along with all the angry, bitter political back-and-forth that dominates those platforms (at least on my feeds!), it was actually a very freeing feeling to remove them from all of my devices and know that those familiar icons would not be calling out to me anymore, giving me that hard-to-ignore urge to click and "just look for a minute"...which in turn, more often than not, led me to scroll endlessly when I should have been spending my limited time on this earth doing something more meaningful.

I used Instagram stories to announce my departures from FB and Twitter (because I wasn't quite ready to dump Instagram yet!).

LinkedIn was also extremely easy to leave.  I only joined that site a number of years ago to use it as a way to promote my two Catholic novels, Finding Grace (2012) and Erin's Ring (2014); but even at the beginning I rarely posted anything on there, and I never really figured out how to use that social media tool to its maximum benefit.  I wrote my books during the seven-year period that occurred after more than two decades of being a  full-time SAHM to five boys--beginning when the youngest of our sons started high school, and ending when the grandchildren had started to arrive and the rest of our single older boys started to get married in quick succession.  (I mean, really quick: three of them were married in an 11-month period, between Dce. 2013 and Nov. 2014!!) Once I became a grandmother, I moved beyond the novel-writing phase of my life and entered the SAHG (Stay-at-Home-Grammy) era.  (Ha ha--at my age, perhaps I should just call it the "SAG" era?  But I digress.) And the sad truth is that my books are now out of print--although used copies are still sold on Amazon.  (Luckily, I have a personal stash that I purchased from my publisher a while back, so even if I have lots more grandchildren than I already do, I should have enough to give them all a copy of each book.)  Anyway, the bottom line is that I realized I just don't need to be a part of a career networking site anymore, if I ever did, so farewell LinkedIn.

The only site that was painfully hard to leave was Instagram, where I followed some of the most inspiring, talented, funny, faith-filled Catholic writers and "influencers" (most of them former bloggers whom I'd originally discovered through their blogs), along with a number of beloved family members.  I LOVED Instagram, I won't lie.  But Instagram is owned by Facebook, and as a matter of principle, I felt I needed to make a complete break.  That was the one that hurt.  That was the one site that gave me the most joy and the one I'll probably always miss.

HOWEVER, truth be told, Instagram wasn't really all that good for me, no matter how much I tried to convince myself otherwise.  I spent too much time thinking about what picture I could take for my next post. (Never have I taken so many pictures of the food I was cooking or eating!)  I was scrolling through feeds that led me to other feeds, and then to others, and others...and before I'd know it, I had spent over an hour gazing at the lovely pictures of complete strangers...and sometimes, comparing myself negatively with their curated perfection.  Also, like Facebook, Instagram knew what kind of clothes I liked, what kind of books I read, and it was constantly enticing me to buy a cute lace top or a WWII historical novel that looked like it was right up my alley.  In a way, I'll miss those well-targeted IG ads, because they exposed me to some items that I would never have otherwise found on my own.  But then again, isn't it a little creepy that Instagram knew exactly the kind of things I normally purchased?  Isn't it a little concerning that my online activities are being followed, and noted, by some phantom Internet overseer?

So I said my sad good-bye to IG with this post last Sunday:

I thought it was apropos to go out with a photo of a cup of coffee, a good book, a set of Rosary beads, and a picture of Jesus.  This pretty much tells the story of how I'm hoping to spend the extra time I'll have now that I'm not distracted by what's happening on IG.

I guess I'm kind of off the grid--but I'm still here at my String of Pearls (which turns 10 this March!), so that's not quite true.  I've decided that I'd like to get back into blogging (and that right there is a statement that seems almost as old-fashioned as saying, "I think it's time to bring back VHS and cassette tapes").  Hopefully I'll be blogging more, praying more, and reading more good books.  Sewing and drawing more, too.  That's my plan for 2021.

So I'll be back, dear readers.  And if you have a blog that I used to read, before I got so thoroughly entrenched in the IG world, I may be visiting it more often now.  And when I do, I'll most likely be drinking coffee.

(Please note: I am not judging you if you still enjoy all the aforementioned forms of social media; for me personally, the negatives had begun to outweigh the positives, so I did what I felt I had to do for my spiritual and mental well-being.)