A vacation from social networking

For the past few months, I let technology eat up my life so much that I got totally addicted to it. It made me realize that it has the power to change who you are. I saw something like that happening in the X-files where a woman’s mind will be controlled via artificial intelligence. It felt something like that. I had become a person I couldn’t recognize anymore. So I decided to take off from Facebook and then I gave off my smart phone and then Poof! I just vanished from social networking. Well, it was only for 9 days but then it was great!

The first day was pathetic I so badly wanted to reactivate my account but then I told myself I am not going anywhere near Facebook. So what happened these 9 days well a lot of things. First, now I am back on Facebook but I don’t scroll up and down the home page looking for new updates. If there are no notifications for me I log out. Then came the best part - my friends, my lovely friends started calling me one after another asking what happened to me and if I am OK. My phone was engaged all the time one call was in waiting most of the times and it felt like good old college and school days. “Accha, hold on Preeti is calling let me put her in conference” Trust me; it was fantabulous than our Facebook conference chat and whatsapp group chat. I actually found the people who would be concerned about me if I didn’t hear from me for more than 3 or 4 days. My work got more productive and apparently my manager was happy. I came up with new ideas picked a new hobby, started persuading on my interest -fashion designing.  I started spending more time with my family and people who are there infront of me.

I agree we need to adapt to the improvement in technology and all that. But do you remember the famous saying, “Old is Gold” I think it made a lot of sense during these 9 days. Right now, I have a simple phone and I rarely log into Facebook because I know I can talk to my friends on phone when I have time and they are not waiting infront of the laptop staring at Facebook waiting for me to ping them. They will talk to me on phone when I want to talk to them. One of my good friends once told me there were times when we send a letter and wait for days and sometimes weeks, It took hours even for a telegram to reach us and we stayed patient to hear from the other person. But now we send a message and don’t get a reply from the other person within minutes we start thinking that the person is avoiding us. We do not have the patience to wait for a response. How true! J

A vacation from facebook was a revelation to me. It was not easy which showed how much addicted I have gotten to technology and how easy it is to lose yourself in the hassle of technology. Most of the times, I think internet is a curse.

Maybe you should also try taking sometime off from FB and other social networking sites J