Breaking Away.

One morning at the beginning of November, I was scrolling for ten minutes on my Instagram account. I decided that it was sucking away my time and I wanted to give up social media for a while. There were books piling up next to my bed and with NaNoWriMo in full swing and my full time job, I was constantly trying to find enough time to do everything that I want to do. That does not include the things that I need to do for my self care.

I was chatting on the phone with my mom a few weeks ago and realized that I was not spending enough time daily exercising or even drinking enough water. A simple concept, but it is something that I need to focus on because my body was telling me that I needed to change something or I would be miserable.

I sent a post to my accounts explaining that I was taking a break for a while. I thought about putting an explanation, like I needed more time for myself, or I needed to waste less time scrolling endlessly on my tiny computer in my pocket, but in the end, I just said that I was taking a break and left it at that. As a reminder to myself, I deleted the app from my home screen to avoid the habit of opening it after work or early in the morning.

Some of the things I did in the first week away from social media:

- listening to music

- practicing languages

- playing with my cats

- sitting and breathing

During the second week I got a cold, one that I hadn't quite chased away in this first year back to education. So during this week, there was an increased NOT doing, as my body was telling me I needed more rest. I did continue yoga, drinking more tea, and breathing consciously.

In the classroom I am acutely aware that my students are going through things outside of class, physically as well as mentally, and that they need as many hugs as they do lessons. I continue to teach art, mainly with a mask, but try to focus on the enthusiasm of learning and growing. So many of these kids expect perfection, even when they haven't tried a technique, and it is something that I am constantly reminding them. We "turn our mistakes into masterpieces."

For week 2, more:

*Writing - Still chasing my 50,000 word goal!

*Reading

*People-watching

*Exploring the great outdoors

*Sitting and thinking

*Sleeping

There have definitely been moments when I look for the apps that aren't available on my homescreen any more. But I don't miss the time I usually spend in searching through them. I am not even sure if all my friends realize I haven't posted. Everyone has their own lives that they are involved in, especially around this time of year, and they have other distractions that take up time. Priorities are hard to manage, but learning how not to build the priority pyramid lopsided is worth it!

I am trying to restart my self-care routine, which includes writing, drawing, reading, and exercising consistently. This is hard to make my body do, though in the end, even accomplishing two of these daily is rewarding. I feel better and my mind is clearer.

UPDATE (December 2022): Since then, I have returned to social media and reached my NaNoWriMo challenge goal, barely surpassing my 50,000 words. I will break for another couple of weeks while I finish editing a book I’ve been working on for several years. I can’t share much about this one except that it is contemporary fiction and includes themes of family, growing up, addictions, and hope. My goal for December is to compile it in the order that I want to send it off to a copywriting editor, which means someone else will check the “flow” of the story and send me back lots of marked-up pages for corrections. Once this has occurred, I would like to send it to another line editor to check grammar and sentence construction. Following these edits I will send out query letters to publishing companies to see if my book can be picked up by a publishing company. I’ve done this before and it is a long process with no guaranteed success. However, the first drafts of manuscripts still hidden in my computer beg me to start: One full-length novel published. Then another. And another…