The Inevitability of a social media detox

There is a certain inevitability to taking a social media break, isn’t there? Not everyone does it, but every few months I need a detox from the endless stream of information, opinion, politics, reels, doom-scrolling, and just generally hollow interactions. Now, that’s not to say all the interactions on social media are hollow, please don’t assume that is what I mean here. It’s that so much of it is. 

I like to engage with my followers, my fellow authors and creatives, and the friends I’ve made through social media (particularly IG). However, I can’t say that it doesn’t feel performative to constantly engage sometimes. Whenever I start to feel like going onto IG is giving me anxiety because I have unread messages or unwatched reels that have been sent to me, I know that’s when I need to take a step away. Usually I plan to take a week off, and end up taking several away because after a day or two, it feels amazing to not have the constant urge to look at my phone.

I even have notifications for IG turned off, and yet the immediate reaction to unlocking my phone is to go straight to IG. That’s a problem, it’s an addiction, and so I’m taking time away for a little bit.

There are other things going on that are causing me to want to step away from engagement - a few frustrations with the world and being human. I’m burned out, essentially that’s the crux of it. Totally, utterly burned out. From work, from life, from relationships and spreading myself thin across all fronts. Naturally I can’t cut out work or friends or family, so social media is the first to go. After all, there is no reason for me to be on IG 99% of the time I spend on it. 

I’m working on a lot of things right now; currently in the midst of preparing for Blood Queen to come out. There are some parts of this element of my life that are coming with their own frustrations, but I’m not going to get into that. Additionally, I’m looking to shift my focus from The Blood Bound Series to something completely out of my normal scope. And I think it’s going to be a really good change for me, one that will allow me to have a bit more freedom with my writing and the journey I’m on. I want to focus a lot on this throughout 2025, and so I must take a break from the thing that’s distracting me the most from what I love to do; write.

Coming out of seasonal depression, having a rough start to 2025, I’m taking care of myself by having this breather. When I come back on, I’ll likely be in substantially better spirits, it’ll be a turn of the tide this summer (also the motorcycle AKA Green Bean will be insured, which in itself brings me the will to live). Trying my best to stay positive, but there is a lot of negative infiltrating IG and that’s getting to me. 

I’m going to catch up on writing, let myself write whatever my heart desires even if it’s crap (that’s what editing is for, right?), devour books day and night, embrace the rain and celebrate the sun, put my health and my home first (I may pop back on for renovation content). And I encourage anyone who made their way to my blog to read this and made it this far to do the same. Buy a facemask, get a tattoo, do something spontaneous, go on a road trip, delete social media for a while, go puddle jumping, just enjoy being human.