The World's Common Tater

I posted on Facebook yesterday that it might be time to delete the app from my devices to force a break. I wrote about that in this post in the past but never did it. It’s become too much of a habit for me. It is even more of  habit during isolation. I struggled to focus on a book. I watched a lot of TV and movies, but it’s easy to scroll mindlessly through Facebook and Twitter while watching a random TV show. I don’t post as much as I used to. I don’t interact as much as I used to. I scroll through more than I used to. There is not a lot of good there. It’s a bad habit that I need to break.

I have done a little better. I do crosswords on my iPad now during times when I would usually be on social media. I play Risk on there as well I’m reading a little more than I was the past couple of months. I still do sometimes scroll through aimlessly, though. Habit? FOMO? Who knows. Facebook is no longer pictures of people having fun or posts about the lives of my friends. It is mainly people arguing and posting political opinions. I still get some good content on Twitter, but it is a lot of the same there. I could fix Twitter easily by unfollowing the random strangers who annoy me these days. Facebook is harder since they are all friends and family. Deleting the app from my phone would be easier.

My phone, in general, has become a negative in life. There is the constant lure of social media. There is also the constant threat of a call from work that will ruin my day. And I can’t guarantee those calls will respect my personal time. I’ve had to tell people  I was turning my phone off on a Saturday to get them to stop texting me on my weekend off about things that were not emergencies. If I didn’t get texts from family who don’t live with me I would turn my phone off at 5 and leave it off until 9 the next morning. That’s not possible, so the dark cloud of work looms over me all the time.

My phone has become my enemy that I helped create.