Winter tends to be a particularly introspective time for me. The cold and the rain, the bottom of a long exhale before the warmth.

After gripping with fact that my phone screentime was creeping up to four to sometimes six hours a day, I’ve mostly been off social media since the start of the year. When I started to pay attention to where time was being consumed, I wanted to make some changes.

This comes off of the self reflection that my time is truly my most precious asset, and distraction is such an easy thing to manipulate.

A life spent distracted is a life watching time scroll by. It’s robbing us all. It’s not a coincidence we all feel the years pass quicker each year. I intend to slow this passing by getting back to focusing on intention.

When I look back at all the things that have brought me true joy, it’s always spending quality time with the people I love and focusing on something new to accomplish. I feel weighed down by anything else that leads me further from seeking deeper connections, higher knowledge, and mastering my crafts.

This isn’t an announcement that I’m leaving social media or something. More of a statement that when I am on social media, I aim to be more intentional with my time. Because it’s mine to spend. This means rewiring my relationship to my phone as a tool for my goals instead of an impulsive distraction to fill every second of perceived down time. I’ll admit, I still have work to do.

I want to return to why I came to Instagram in the first place: to journal through my photos and to share the music I’m finding. I want this space to be a reflection of my life, not a station to absorb an algorithm’s influence.

Even the term “consumer” gifts us with the vital clue that holds up the mirror to our relationship with social media. We “consume.” And if “we are what we eat,” then we are a sum product of the time we spend on social media and the junk we are fed. Doom scrolling and memes gives us the shot of dopamine we crave, like sugar or umami in junk food, but ultimately leaves us hollow, craving for real sustenance. Craving for real life experience.

I just started to read Dune and found this quote to be particularly apt:

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”

Also, currently reading The Anxious Generation and would highly recommend How to Break Up With Your Phone.