Taking a breather from work and social media

I woke up one morning in September, tweeted that I’m taking a break, posted on my Instagram stories that I’m going on a breather. Then, I handed my phone over to my wife to change my Twitter and Instagram password, locking me out of the two social apps I use the most. I’ve been feeling drained for a couple of weeks, you know that feeling of being down too frequently, thinking too much about life like it actually sucks.

Beyond shutting out all the social media noise and distractions, I thought it would be nice to take a break from work too. So, my wife and I traveled to Abuja just to change our environment and explore. We wanted to rest, yet do so many things like going to Kaduna by rail and spending a night but it was quite relaxing and beautiful to see my aunts and their family in Abuja (visited 3 of them, stayed with one), seeing Joseph and his upcoming tummy, experiencing Gurara falls and going Kilishi shopping at Area 1 etc.

See details of the 6-days trip and cute pictures here. If you’re like Emmanuel who thought I took the break to look after my wife (as per 9 months after the wedding), head over there to see cute baby pictures too. Dhurr! ?

After reading Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport (author of one of the amazing books I read in 2017 – Deep Work), slowing down and taking a break can help against perceived lack of time for other productive activities. I was able to reallocate the swiping/scrolling time to other (often more) productive things that I’ve been pushing away for some times now, specifically:

1. Updated my website eventually. Whew! I’m finally married here.
2. Updated Mr. & Mrs. Oyemade’s website. Check it out, you’ll love it.
3. Started redesigning Gospellyricsng’s website. A completely new minimalist WordPress theme which I hope to implement by January.
4. Built a wedding website for my beloved friends. Congratulations once again to #TheOludes.
5. Volunteered to build a media-submission-to-google-drive landing page for a non-profit. I low-key wish there’s a list of social enterprises or non-profits with what they do that one can go through and join based on interest.
6. Starting writing my 2019 recap. Check last year’s here.

Well, my 5 weeks break is over and I hope to take more like this in the future to detox, realign my focus (you have no idea how much these noises skew our worldview) and hopefully visit places to remind myself.

We need to remind ourselves that life doesn’t suck much, that it’s usually just a break or more money that we need. ?

Have you taken any break or social media detox recently? If yes, how was it? If no, you should try it, really.