Reporting from the Front Lines of Social Media Mania

I drink my coffee from what normal people would call a soup bowl – two bowls. I roll out religiously after every Tabata class. And, I meditate for at least 7 minutes every day. But, about six months ago it all fell to hell. My “go-to” regime let me down. Or, as I later realized, I let it down.

There was not enough caffeine in the world to fuel the day, not enough rolling out to prevent extreme achiness and an escalating knee issue – not enough meditative minutes to bliss out the barrage of incoming emails and texts requesting my immediate attention. Is there any other kind these days?

I considered several options. A) This is what my mid-forties looks like. B) Perhaps I need to switch to green tea, yoga and 8-10 minute meditations like all those women who seem to float through the day C) My introverted, sensitive inner self has declared war against my gregarious, impenetrable outer self or D) I have Lymes Disease.

It never occurred to me I was suffering from social media mania.

Hyper-efficient? Yes. Uber-productive? Absolutely. Accomplishment-driven? You bet. Lazy is pretty much the worst four-letter word that can be used in our home. I could get more done in a multi-tasking minute than most people I know.

I felt like a certified first responder for digital emergencies. And everything was a five-alarm fire. No one actually says that. But it’s implied. And if you don’t respond ASAP, you receive all kinds of bad digital ju-ju. I lived at both ends – irritated people couldn’t wait and irritated they couldn’t respond faster. After all, if I’m operating at that frenetic, inhuman and totally unnecessary speed, everyone else better well ante up.

But, here is the truth. I was tired. Really tired.

And I didn’t like myself anymore. I didn’t even feel like I knew who I was beyond a doer of jobs and executer of tasks. I was being impatient with my beautiful sons, irritated with my loving husband and experiencing spiking levels of anxiety and extreme sadness.

So, in a post-shower, bathroom-floor-breakdown (why do these things always seem to happen in the bathroom?), between silent sobs, I said to my husband, myself and whatever God might be listening, something is deeply wrong and I need to change but I don’t know what.

Here’s what I later realized. I could no longer hear myself through the incessant, insistent, insidious buzz of social media. Marshall McLuhan who, in the 1970’s in relation to television and radio, is quoted saying,

The singular message broadcast out at any given moment is nowhere near as impactful as the pervasive and constant intrusion of the medium itself on your physical reality.

Indeed! The pervasive and constant intrusion of social media had obliterated my ability to hear my inner voice. For me, this is the voice that gives me fun ideas and creative brainstorms, that fills me with passion and energy, with love and genuine excitement. It is what makes me who I am.

So, three weeks ago, I decided to follow the Rumi’s advice:

The trick is not to seek for love

But to seek to find the obstacles

You have put in its way.

I unplugged from social media.

Here’s what I discovered within a week:

1) Even if you reply to everyone about everything in an effort to check a hundred virtual boxes and clear your plate before 8:45AM, the feedback requiring feedback, follow-up to your follow-up, requests for more attention, time and money is deeply, paralyzingly overwhelming.

2) If people are forced against their efficiency-driven wills to pick up the phone to speak with you about their fire-hose of requests, complaints, irritations, scheduling conflicts, infantile projections, compulsive neediness and self-indulgent bitch sessions (all of which I too engage in) – they do this crazy thing called, reflection.

In our trigger-finger manic haze of reactivity we have stopped pausing for even 30 seconds to decide if what we are doing is truly necessary or merely ‘look at me’ fluff fueled by our fear others won’t think we are ‘on it’ or ‘plugged in enough’. And if that happens, sheesh, our very existence may become obsolete.

3) The less digitally connected I am, the more connected I am to myself, and the people I truly love.