Day One Without Facebook and Google+

I'm feeling the withdrawals of my decision to give up social media, and unfortunately, I'm finding even more things to distract me. I decided not to give up Pinterest, because I want to start using some of this extra time to get back into crafts and DIY stuff. I'm having to use discipline to stay off right now, but I'm pretty sure I'll be o.k., since I deleted most of my boards and unfollowed most of the people I was following.

My bugaboo right now is news sites. I usually check Google News, NBC.com and The Guardian online every morning. It's hard not to get caught up in reading there for a long time, so I'm going to have to white knuckle it. I'm sure once I get started back with my crafts, that won't be a problem.

It's really hard not sharing. I'm constantly seeing things I want to share and then remember I can't. I don't worry about it, though, because I'm sure somebody, somewhere is sharing them.

The thing I miss the most is my Gainesville gardening forum on Facebook. I have the Florida Gardening forum on Gardenweb, which is o.k., but it's not hyper-local. It's nice to know what local gardeners are doing, but I gardened for many years without social media, so I guess I can do it again. I made a few friends on there that I'm still in touch with, so I'm sure I'll be fine.

My problem now is trying to buckle down and work. I worked this out so that Sunday would be my first day without social media for a reason: it's my one day off. I knew it would be the hardest day to not be able to play on FB and G+, but there is a lot else I need to do , so I'm going to get started on trying to reorganize the boxes in the bedroom so I can walk in there and maybe have some room to work on getting some boxes consolidated so I will have more room. I know, shifting boxes is stupid, but I have no choice right now. Once I get some more bookshelves and such, I will be able to unpack more of them.

If I find out that Pinterest is getting to be too big a distraction, I will quit that too, but I feel like since I can't really talk to people there, I'll be able to keep it in check. Ditto with gardening forums. I need to spend more time gardening and less time talking about it, even though it's good to have somewhere to go for questions.

So that's how it's going so far. I'm still finding too many things to distract me, so I'm still going to have to just buckle down and use discipline. One thing that is bothering me is so many people asking why I couldn't just do that with FB and G+, because you can, so why can't I? Well, I can't. Get over it and stop being judgmental!  I'm doing the best I can.