It's another week without social media - sort of.

I did go on for approximately a 24-hour period from midday Monday (my birthday) to midday Tuesday (or National Danielle Was Hungover Day - for short), as promised since my Plug Back In For Charity donation page raised $100.

Before going into observations from another week without social media, I'll talk a bit about what it was like to go back on for a day: it was not as overwhelming as I thought it would be (I was picturing about 250 unread FB updates/notifications in my head). I was a bit anxious the night before - though that might have just been because I knew I was about to ingest about 200 ounces of alcohol in my system. Um, who wouldn't be a bit anxious?

As always, I loved being able to interact with people, especially on Twitter and Facebook. That is definitely what I miss most. In fact, I used so much social media in just the first few hours my phone died and wasn't resurrected again til about 9 p.m. that night - which made meeting up in the everyone-has-a-smartphone-on-them-but-I-don't-have-numbers-memorized age a bit hard on my bday. But hindsight is 420? 20/20? Dateline? Something like that.....

I'll be blogging about my bday escapades later. For now, I'll give some more thoughts on being social media free - do I miss it? can I still work without it? pros/cons?

Week 2:

1) Without social media, it makes it a lot easier to not have TV show plots spoiled before watching an episode. The mid-season finale of Walking Dead was about a week ago. While the ending was ruined for my boyfriend (actually due to a FB post from one of the actors), I had no idea. I liked that. I appreciated that. And I still haven't watched the finale of Sons of Anarchy. So...don't ruin it for me :)

2) There has definitely been a noticeable decrease in hits on my news stories and blogs - which definitely sucks, for my work (less hits=less ad $) and for me (absolutely zero hits on a blog for almost a week is just kinda sad). So, if anyone has any pointers for promoting information sans social media, I am alllll ears.

3) That brings me to the fact that I have been checking out sites like reddit more. And a lot of local blogs. This is on top of the news sites I mentioned in my Week 1 update. I guess this way of gathering news may seem old school, insufficient and complicated - but, overall, I dig getting things from the source as opposed to scrolling for hours (yes, hours) on FB. At one point, actually, my boyfriend thought I cheated and checked Facebook when I gave him a fact that had recently been discussed regarding Lord of the Rings. That fact being that Stuart Townsend was initially cast as Aragorn but was replaced by (fellow SLU alum) Viggo Mortensen just days into filming. The reason I knew that fact was because I had watched "Queen of the Damned" late last week, also with Townsend, and wanted to know more about his career since I had never seen him in anything else. So I Imdb-ed the shit out of him - and found that piece of trivia.
Long story short, I'm finding *new* ways of collecting useless info.

4) I've noticed a few instances now where I've been the only person not on the phone checking updates. I expected this. It's fine. In fact, it seems to be getting a little better. A little.

5) Planning my birthday stuff was not difficult but it was not easy either. As opposed to writing one event and inviting a bunch of people, I wrote dozens of text messages to more than 60 people. And then...my phone died that night. So, I'm not going to tell you how many ended up attending events because that, too, could also be perceived as sad. But, for the record, I had a blast.

6) I continue to have to think of new tactics for work. Today, for example, I probably could have gotten some information from my usual Cohoes FB contacts about the pedestrian who sadly died in an accident Wednesday morning. But, instead, I reached out to main city/police officials and got very little info because the investigation is ongoing. So, my work is more "official" but less....hm...interesting? I dunno. I guess you can be the judge of that.

7) I am sleeping better! I am exercising! And I am doing the dishes, damn it! There are a lot of positives that are coming from this. And, to be perfectly honest, I'm enjoying the hiatus. There's less distractions. Less stimuli. And, did I mention, more sleep? :)

You can still donate to Camp Little Notch and the Pawling Statue Project via my two sites:
UnPlug for Charity - gofundme.com/UnPlugForCharity
Plug Back In for Charity - gofundme.com/PlugBackInCharity