I spent a year living in a cabin with no electricity. If you’ve read almost anything about me or any of my other blog posts you’ve probably heard me talk about this. I’m not trying to bore people with the stories from this time, but because of the time I spent with no electricity, my perspective on so many things was completely altered.

The social media shut-off

I had access to internet about once a week when I first started this year of no electricity in my cabin. Later in the year, I had a bit more access, but it was still very limited. Because of this, I knew I would have next to no time to do anything with social media.

I was only really active on Instagram and Facebook, but I decided while I was there that I would take Facebook completely offline and that I would only download Instagram occasionally. Usually to post a photo updating people on my life.

During this year without social media, I realized how little I actually cared about it. The first week or so was hard in that I wished I could communicate better with the people I wasn’t around, but after that first week, I didn’t miss it one time. I would compare it in some way to when I went off pop. For the first while, I was craving it a ton, but after a while, I didn’t even desire to have it.

Turning it on again

At the end of the year, I reintegrated into normal life again. One of the logical steps in this process was downloading my apps again and starting to use social media.

There were a couple of problems though. First, I didn’t care at all about anyone’s life I was seeing on social media. Because of this, anytime I would scroll I would almost never like or comment. It would be mindless energy consumption.

I decided that I didn’t really care for social media except for a few select functions or a few select people. I debated turning it right back off like I was used to, but I decided that I should at least try and stay up a little bit with technology before it completely leaves me in the dust.

The real battle

The real challenge for me now is that I understand the value that social media can have. Especially for a business if they do it right. But I also understand my complete lack of desire to get involved with social media any deeper. I have a hard time doing/creating things that I know I wouldn’t enjoy if I was someone else partaking in this thing.

Because of this, I find it hard to ever post about my life or anything happening because very rarely do I actually care about those same things for my social media friends. Don’t get me wrong, I care a ton about people, but the person that you are on social media vs real life, no matter how close, is never the same.

My battle is not the ability to build up a social presence, but instead, it’s about my desire to do so. If I had nothing against it, I would go full speed ahead, but every time I think about doing this, the little part that doesn’t care pulls a rope and yanks me back to the reality of my mind.

Interested to know if anyone else deals with problems like this? Certainly, my story is a little different in how I came about this mindset, but I know I can’t be the only one.