“Book” Your Self Care: Put Your Phone Down!

As the texting-neck, avocado worshipping, gremlin millennial of every boomer’s worst nightmare, it goes without saying that I’m on my phone… A LOT. 

Too much. 

I know this. I 100% can recognize the fact that I spend way too much time looking at screens, but a large part of this can be attributed to the modern world we live in. We live in a consumer society, and one of our biggest items of consumption is social media and its content. We are conditioned to believe we must constantly be creating, engaging, liking, tweeting, tik-tocking, building a platform, sharing a message, on and on and on. 

And please don’t get me wrong, I love social media and technology. I really do. Social media has been an amazing way for me to express myself and build genuine friendships in a community of people I finally feel I belong in (hey, bookstagram fam, love ya!). It allows me to maintain long distance relationships with people I love dearly, communicating despite miles and time zones. It exposes me to new ideas, challenges my way of thinking, introduces me to new artists and authors and creators all doing incredible things. 

But it’s also exhausting. It doesn’t take much for Twitter or Instagram or Facebook to go from your happy place to the seventh circle of hell filled with the unsolicited opinions of the worst people the world can offer. With the constant barrage of horror that seems to be happening every day, it can also be an anxiety-inducing mess as you try to fight your way through it, advocating and speaking up as best you can. 

But you can’t fight every internet troll. You can’t create a constant stream of perfect posts. You can’t comment on every person’s status update. You can’t answer every phone call or respond to every text.

And you shouldn’t. 

You need to give yourself permission to step away and protect yourself. Everything will still be okay if you allow yourself to disengage from the cybersphere. Your friends will still love you, your followers will still want to know what you have to say, and the assholes will still be there for you to absolutely slay with a perfectly crafted tweet. I promise.

Just like you need to acknowledge and release yourself from toxic friendships and relationships, you should also pay attention to when you develop a toxic relationship with your devices. You should make sure you’re taking care of yourself first and foremost, and a great way to do this is by logging off. 

Giving yourself breaks will give you the space to recharge your batteries, and this is particularly important for my fellow neurodiverse fam. The internet and its offerings can trigger so many aspects of depression, anxiety, bipolar, ADHD, etc. It can be toxic to your self-care and state of mind. So, please, protect yourself. Know that you have permission to take days off, especially from social media if it’s hurting you. 

What should you do to keep those thumbs busy without a phone to type on?

READ (duh). 

Romance novels are the perfect escape. When the future is so uncertain, is there anything better than a guaranteed happily ever after?

No. The answer is no. I will not be taking questions.

…Actually, I’m open to a discussion on pizza being a second correct answer. 

Romance novels and pizza. Glad we got that settled. 

Now, for any of my fellow bookstagrammers, bloggers, etc., taking a tech break can almost feel like a loss of productivity. Your downtime quickly becomes dedicated to liking and engaging with other posts to make sure you beat that pesky algorithm, and not accomplishing those things can feel a bit unsettling. One way I absolutely love to defy that capitalistic impulse to always get things done is reading novella anthologies.