So before I pretend to get all high and mighty and act as if I took an intentional break from social media, to detox, cleanse my brain or anti oxidise my hair follicles or whatever other myths they sell to you nowadays, I didn't. I dropped my phone in the bloody toilet (for about the 10th time) and had to wait 2 weeks until my insurance got a new one back to me. You would think my now I would have learnt to have NOT PUT IT IN THE BACK POCKET OF MY JEANS. But will I continue to make the same mistakes until the end of time? Also yes.
However, although unplanned, having 2 weeks without my phone did teach me a few things so I thought I would share a little bit about how things panned out.
1) I do not own another method of telling the time at all. The one thing that struck me the most was how dependant I was on my phone for the smallest things, for example TELLING THE TIME. I even had to go into the nearest post office at one point and ask the guy what the time was and he looked at me as if I had used him for the square root of Pi. I was late for pretty much everything during these couple of weeks because once I had left my house, I was in the abyss. It was slightly liberating though, not having to constantly power walk with the knowledge that I was going to be late, I was just blissfully unaware.
2) I have a crazy amount of spare time every single day. Honestly I am the first person normally to complain about how I have NO time EVER and am always so busy and blah blah but without my phone I cannot tell you the amount of time that I spent sitting in silence staring out of train windows, bus windows, walking to places or listening into strangers conversations. It even got to the point where I actually had to buy a book from Waterloo station at a ridiculous price because I was going to go crazy if I had to do another journey in absolute silence. It did make me realise though that I usually would waste all of this time just scrolling through whatever was on the screen of my phone, and make me think about how useful this time would be if I spent it being more productive. I mean, I haven't since, but imagine.
3) I have more will power than I thought. Whilst we are on the subject of spare time, I actually found myself going to the gym more this weeks and managed to fit in a solid 4 sessions, which may not sound like much to some of you but its a good effort from me. BUT. But. As you can imagine, without a phone this made gym time very very quiet indeed. Do you actually understand the amount of willpower it took to spend 45 minutes on a treadmill with only the sound of your own footfall ringing in your ears? I'm proud of myself.
4) It's kind of lonely. For someone who lives on their own in London, I am happy to admit that I rely a lot on my phone for keeping in contact with all my family and friends from home, and having that snatched away was actually kind of lonely. Even though I am known for being the worst ever at replying to texts when I'm busy, I actually found myself looking forward to get home just so that I could Facebook call (lol) my boyfriend on my laptop or even email (double lol) my mum back.
5) EMAILS. SO MANY EMAILS. One thing I didn't look forward to getting home to however was the bombardment of emails. You don't realise how easy and convenient getting emails sent to your phone is, for you to quickly reply back to and sort out in chunks throughout the day. Being a freelancer with about 3 different shows to organise at one time meant that when I got home I was straight on the laptop getting back to everyone, until it got to 9pm one night and I realised I hadn't even taken my shoes off or moved from the same spot since I got through the door 3 hours before. Never again.
6) The social media part wasn't actually that hard. Being a self diagnosed Instagram addict, I thought being without my phone was going to be like a drug addict being sent to rehab, but actually I didn't really struggle that much. Admittedly it did help that you can get most forms of social media up on a laptop, so I got my fix this way, but I found myself mainly using it just for contacting people. Oh and FYI Instagram for desktops SUCKS. There is no DM button either so I missed a collaboration request and so many lovely messages, I'm sorry!
7) I have some very fickle followers. Not you lovely people obviously, because you are taking the time to read my blog (and I love you so much for it!) but being MIA from Instagram and not being able to post or engage in other people's posts for almost 2 weeks meant that I lost almost 50 followers. Now I'm not that upset, seeing as I am not one of these people who takes numbers of followers too seriously - I have only grown by about 500 of you in the last year - but it just made me think how many of those unfollowers had a 'oh she didn't like my posts so I won't like hers' attitude or something similar that meant that when I took a small break, they lost interest. I know the whole deal with Instagram is this instant, constant, consistent flow of images that are expected but that is just way too much pressure for me which is why I don't think I could ever be one of these full time, dedicated bloggers. I admire you guys honestly.
I think that is about it, and I'm sorry for the slightly unrelated blog images this time round, being without my phone meant that I left my loves over at Boux a little unloved for posts so I thought I would kill two birds with one stone and show off some of their new swimwear line as well. All linked below.
Use code TARAJADE20 for 20% off.
Swimsuit: here
Bikini: here
