I remember when Aaron started texting and I thought it was so dumb. I would say, just call them instead of spending all that time texting. Then, I remember when Aaron got his first iphone and I still had the flip phone that you had to press every number 3 times to get the right letter to text on. I was so frustrated at my phone and jealous of his, but I didn't want one because it seemed so difficult to learn. I also remember when Facebook came around and it was just for college kids. I was not in college, and so I didn't have one, but once again it seemed like too much work and I didn't get the concept. As you all know eventually it opened up to everyone and now a days even your grandma is on Facebook. Then there's twitter. I joined that too wondering if I would ever use it. I mean you can only use 140 words, what the heck? I didn't like someone telling me how many words I could use to do something. Seemed dumb. And now we have Instagram where we can put out awesome looking pictures to all of our thousands of followers. I immediately loved this social media outlet.

Those are the three social media outlet's that I use: Twitter, Facebook, & Instagram. It all started with me pretty sure I would never be into these things and now I find myself needing a break. If I sit back and think about it I'm a little disturbed that I'm even having this issue. That a real concern of mine right now is how much time I spend on social media. Seems silly, but yet it's so real.

I honestly wouldn't even say I spend that much time on it, although I'm probably defending my addiction. But here's the deal.  It's the first thing I check when I wake up. It's what I check at stop lights. It's what I check when conversation lulls. It's what I check at baseball games. It's what I check while riding in the car with Aaron. It's what I check …. ALL THE TIME.

This whole thing was made larger when a week ago Aaron started his sabbatical. On his sabbatical he's completely cut off from social media. He hasn't looked at twitter, instagram, or facebook in over a week and he tells me that he loves it! Now that he's not engaging, it seems as though I'm engaging more.

It's funny because writing this post seems stupid. It seems like a petty problem to be voicing to the world, but I have a small suspicion that this is a bigger problem to some of us than we care to think about. I was voicing this to some girlfriends the other day and another friend of mine is also struggling with this. She listed all the questions that you ask if you are an addict, and she answered yes to all of them. I answered them as well and also answered yes. Y'all this is a problem because social media is becoming more important to me than my real life friends. That makes my stomach hurt.

I decided to do this last Wed and I'm here to tell you that I still have not quit social media. It's weird because I keep saying “tomorrow”, “tomorrow I'll do it”.  Well my friends, today is tomorrow. Today is the day that I let go of something that takes up so much of my time. I'm committing to be off of social media from today until the end of July. I have no idea how you are going to see all my fun vacation pics from this summer, or know what I'm eating for dinner each night, but I have a slight suspicion that my real life friends will know these things and see these things. It's just how life works.

I'm a blogger and so I use social media to promote my writing and podcasts, and so you may still see my posts show up on my facebook page {like if you haven't and you'll still see the posts} but it'll be because I did that from my blog, and not on facebook.

I'm really excited about what this summer will look like without my head always looking down at my phone. I'm excited to unplug from online and plug in with my family and friends. I know this will be hard. I'm going cold turkey and it will likely be ugly for a few days. So, for me this is what I'm doing. I'll keep you up to date with how it's going, and you must keep me up to date with anything major you announce on facebook because I'll never see it. If you get engaged, let me know. If you have a baby, let me know. If you find an awesome new restaurant in Austin, let me know.

See you back on social media in August!