Unplugging (updated)

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From Friday night to Saturday night, I turned off my phone. I called my mother first, to assure her that i was ok (she has a habit of jumping to the worst conclusions if she can’t get ahold of me…I have inherited this) and then I just…turned it off. 

I didn’t look at Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or Pinterest. I didn’t text or call or Snapchat. And yes, I get it, #firstworldproblems. But it was hard. And weird. It was the first time in forever (cue that song from Frozen) that I’d been completely disconnected from everyone. And, aside from my fear that something horrible might happen to someone and they wouldn’t be able to get ahold of me (I told you, I inherited it from mom) it was actually really nice. 

When I spoke to people, I gave them my full attention. I didn’t mindlessly scroll through a Facebook feed I’d already scrolled through several times. I didn’t take silly useless snapchats and send them to my friends. The sun set on Friday and it was really pretty, and I didn’t take a picture of it. I watched an episode of Scandal (I was unplugged, but I allowed myself some tv–I mean, it was Scandal, you guys!) and I recognized the actor but couldn’t place him and I couldn’t load up IMDB but it didn’t really matter. My bulldog looked adorable a lot, but I didn’t Instagram and filter his cute grumpy face and share it. A song came on the radio while I washed dishes and I didn’t know the name, but I still sung along.
And I was ok. I still enjoyed the sunset. Elton and I snuggled and actually watched a show–I didn’t play some brainless game on my phone the whole time. I read my book and did some chores. I worked at the library, I visited my parents, I walked the dog. And I did it alone, without anyone else to share it with.
It was peaceful. I felt no pressure to keep up or to prove myself. Of course it’s a self imposed pressure, no one actually cares if you don’t post a photo of how much fun you’re having, and sometimes it’s more proof of fun when you don’t have time to stop and take pictures, and all that being said, why must there be any proof? There’s no need.
When I turned my phone on, I wondered for a minute if I would be disappointed. What if no one noticed I’d been missing? But text messages rolled in, alerts popped up, people wanted to talk to me still, it wasn’t just all in my head.
And I had missed it. I missed sending things to my husband and my friends. I missed knowing what was going on with them. I wondered all day about how my husbands day was going. I wondered if my friend had put up new pictures of her baby, if anyone would join us to go out that evening, if my parents were actually home for me to visit (they were, and were  happy when I just showed up out of the blue).
As I reflect on the unplugged experience, I think what I discovered was that I need to impose more balance on my life. I don’t want to leave the social sharing world, I enjoy it too much. I love my family and my friends, I love seeing their pictures and sending them mine, I love our jokes and our plans and how there’s always someone who can relate to whatever I need them to relate to. But as with all things, moderation is the key. That empty repeated scrolling through Facebook  has got to go. But snapchats to my best friends to complain about a slow day or a terrible patron? I need those. And I like my pictures. They preserve memories of happy things and happy times, whether they’re with my pals or my pets or my books.
I’m going to do this: every time I’m about to click on Facebook to scroll through for the nth time in a day, I’m going to pick up my book instead. Minutes better spent, for sure. And who couldn’t use a few extra minutes of reading squeezed into their day?
How about you, dear readers? What’s your favorite aspect of social media? What could you/should you do without? Will you join me in spending more time reading books instead of rereading Facebook?
Editor’s note: My husband came home and pointed out that I wrote “waked the dog” instead of “walked the dog”, and also that he worried my post came off as preachy. I hope that’s not true.  But just in case, here’s me admitting that my hope to curb my addiction to Facebook in no way means I think anyone else’s Facebook habits needs fixing. You’re all wonderful, beautiful, amazing readers, and without Facebook, how would you even know I was writing this? ❤

Moody reading….

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Once (twice, thrice, it happens all the time) there was a day when nothing went right. Iced coffee all over the car, screaming toddlers throwing tantrums, lunch left at home, bank account on E, a general feeling of misery throughout the world.

It happens. Sometimes for no apparent reason. Sometimes everything is going a-ok and you still feel pretty lousy about life. You want to hide under the covers, beneath your desk, behind closed doors. And while books can’t exactly cure this feeling, they can definitely help.  Quite frankly, when I have days like this, it is sometimes the only thing that does help, these familiar books, bastions of calm and order in an increasingly chaotic, unfriendly world. Especially if I can pair them with a bottle glass of wine.

Who let me Adult? I can’t Adult anymore today

Feeling like growing up has let you down? Life isn’t living up to your expectations? We’ve all been there. When I’m feeling particularly nostalgic, I go alllll the way back to a stack of Berenstain Bear books, especially “The Berenstain Bears and the Messy Room.” I reread these books constantly as a kid, but this one is more worn than the rest. Something about the order that’s established after Mama throws away all their toys. She puts her foot down and things get done. And then Papa Bear helps make all those beautiful storage things, and all the boxes are labeled neatly, and Mama can open the closet and nothing knocks her over?  A place for everything and everything in its place. (Side note: it is a relief to have just googled this phrase w/ Berenstain Bears and discovered that someone else was affected by this as a kid, too!)organization

Now, there’s no way I can actually do this. I try, believe me. And sometimes I almost succeed.  A few times a year you might stop by my home and be lulled into a sense of “wow, this girl really has her life together and knows how to keep a clean home”. Don’t be fooled.  It’ll all go out the window as soon as I can’t find the book/board game/scarf/sweater/candle I need and decide the best way to locate it is to go through the house like a hurricane.
So, perhaps it’s my inability to stick to my organizational goals that makes this book particularly soothing. Whatever it is, this book still gets read any time my life feels too out of whack.

Nothing Will Ever be Funny Again

The news is depressing as all get out. I like to think I’m an intelligent person, and it’s not that I’m not aware of what’s happening in the world, or that I don’t think it affects me or the people around me. It’s that whenever I attempt to care, it’s just too much. There’s just too much terrible out there.
And yes, sometimes? I just feel like saying this:

So sometimes the “world is horrible” mood really is because the world is horrible. And it’s those times when I really need something to make me laugh. Or at least make me smile. And there are the obvious choices (Amy Poehler’s book, Tina Fey’s book, Mindy Kaling’s book) but I’d like to direct your attention to a little book called “Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging.”  I think, aside from Harry Potter, that this was the first series I was truly obsessed with. I’d wait impatiently for the next book, I worked Georgia’s vocabulary into my own–if you read my journals (you can’t) you’d see that I write in the exact same style whenever I had recently read one of her books. But seriously. This book holds up. I can be having the lousiest of lousy days and the terrorists are winning, and I can open to the first few pages of the book and read about Georgia shaving off her eyebrows and I just…let things go. It’s an immediate tension release. And maybe I don’t laugh out loud at it anymore, but reading the familiar words, picturing the now familiar scene in my own imagination–it’s enough.

angus

 We Found Love in a Hopeless Place

Sometimes you just feel angsty. Supposedly you “grow out of” that kind of feeling, but I think that’s bullshit. I think that’s why I (and a billion other people) love YA books so much. There’s something about raw emotion that is so relatable, and just because you grow out of acting on all of your angsty feels doesn’t mean you don’t have them anymore. So when I’m feeling emotional or lovesick or just sad and wallowy, I’ve found my latest comfort book is “Isla and the Happily Ever After” by Stephanie Perkins.  All three of her books are great (“Anna and the French Kiss” and “Lola and the Boy Next Door”…don’t let the cheesy titles fool you, they’re beautiful) but “Isla” really has this perfect balance of love and loss and sadness and hope, that I can open to any page and fall right in.

annakiss

Eff this

Angry reading is hard. Sometimes you can’t even see the page through frustrated tears. And there aren’t a lot of books that fit this category, and this one especially is probably different for everyone. For me, it’s Tana French–specifically “The Likeness” or “In the Woods”. These detective novels feature fabulous main characters dealing with some real psychopaths, and there is some sense of righteousness in watching the characters you admire get the bad guy eventually.  Like the Perkins books, I can open up “The Likeness” to any page and fall in, ready to battle with Cassie as she solves her mystery and hunts down a killer.  And then I get to feel badass and just a little bit better.

tana

What about you, dear reader? What books do you turn to when the world has got you down?