Social media vacation

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I'm a bit of a media junkie. It comes with the territory when you work in the media industry - it's an unspoken job requirement to have a 'nose for news.' I remember sitting at the dinner table growing up, asking my dad the most random questions like "How is mustard made?" because I wanted needed to know. I've always wanted to be in the know. I've always been interested in learning how the world works and why people live their lives the way they do.

So when major news happens, you can pretty much guarantee I'll be glued to a television or computer screen, anxious to know the latest details. The only thing I clearly remember about the week following Sept. 11, 2001 is racing home every day after school and flipping on the news - the TV didn't go off until I had to go to bed. When Hurricane Ike hit Houston while I lived in Oklahoma, I was glued to cable news coverage and live streams of local newscasts online.

Needless to say, social media is kind of a dream come true for someone like me. Constant streams of information about any topic I could possible desire to be updated on? Yes, please!

Of course, all that information is overwhelming at times. Every couple of months I find myself taking a break from social media for a few days. It's an experiment countless communications professors imposed on me: completely withdraw from media just for one day and write about your experience/results. "It's hard, we're overexposed to media," was always the basic gist of the experiment.

But it's also something worth doing from time to time when you feel overloaded. As of today, I haven't logged into my personal Facebook or Twitter accounts for almost a week - and I can't say I feel like I've missed much by unplugging from my social networks for that long. (Full disclosure: I have logged into my professional Facebook to update the magazine fan pages and Twitter account - but any and all posting has been strictly business.)

Upsides to my little social media vacation: I feel like I've been more productive at work, and I feel less ADD/more focused. I also feel like I've had more time to put into other activities: I've been better about blogging, working on projects in the evening, and even starting a new knitting project. (I haven't knitted much over the past 1.5 years...and it's something I really enjoy doing while watching TV.) My phone battery has managed to stay at full capacity each day for the past week, and I just feel free.

The most interesting part? There's two really. First: I told friends if they really needed me, they knew how to find me and during my first day offline I had more calls and text messages than usual. While that trend hasn't continued, it definitely was interesting to see who texted me. Second: I feel like I've had more to say blogging because I'm not plastering my fleeting thoughts all over Twitter throughout the day. I like the concept of Twitter being a microblog, but give me unlimited word count any day.

Of course, there's downsides - I do feel disconnected from a lot of things and people. When I turned on NPR on the drive home this afternoon, I felt like I'd truly been on vacation - I had no idea what the top news of the day was (returning debt crisis, Egyptians protesting their government again...) I have noticed I've been a bit more obsessive about checking my e-mail (making that triangle above complete, the Gmail devotee that I am with three accounts). And, perhaps most embarrassingly, I really missed all the commentary from the brothers of Packers players I follow on Twitter yesterday during the game - Luke Rodgers and Ryan Hawk are some seriously funny guys. I found myself reaching for my phone a few times, wanting to sign in and see what the chatter was like but I resisted.

At this point, I'm not sure how much long I should resist though. I don't want friends to think I'm ignoring them or that something happened to me. Habit is making me want to check both, but I'm still kind of indifferent to actually bothering to do so - do I really need to be sucked back into everyone's Thanksgiving plans and Black Friday missions? I'm not so convinced I do just yet.

So until then, I'll continue to hang out in social media vacation land where it's just me, my blog and my thoughts - like the good old days.