I probably could have easily done it earlier in the semester. What changed: Met people. I've dealt with social insecurities my whole life and will probably continue to do so. The relevance is if someone is willing to talk to me, I can't just turn off the way they contact me.
Plus, you know. Final exams week. Can't just not do research papers. The internet is too valuable a tool to not use it, and I was never very good at utilizing libraries to begin with.
During the 48 hours (which started Friday), my phone was buzzing the whole time with text messages from a new friend and no amount of points in a class is worth going two days not talking to this new friend. My soul is burning brighter than it has in awhile. I'm emotionally a wreck and emotionally uplifted at the same time. I really like this girl. It just figured I'd meet someone who's managed to flip my whole view on the world upside down the week I'm trying to do a project involving not accessing new media.
I guess the best I'll be able to do here is discuss times previously in my life I've gone new medialess, and talk about what my plans were before life threw me this (wonderful) curveball.
I used to have a facebook account. I was addicted to the site, really. I met all sorts of new and amazing people through various social apps. I've always been a collector of other people's stories and enjoy the company of outlandish and far-fetched folk. But, I came to realize over the years Facebook was not healthy for me. I'm sure I've mentioned a dozen times I've struggled with mental health over the years. I need to feel at the very least wanted, and if that desire isn't reinforced I get really grumpy and sore with people.
Constant contact with "everyone" I knew in such an immediate way drove me crazy. Girls I previously had crushes on and thought the world of posted about how wonderful their boyfriends were even when I knew it was simply them trying to tell the world their relationships were perfect to try and convince themselves the guy wasn't actually a total tool. Family would talk about their jobs and new people they hired while I languished unemployed and desperate for a leg up. I emotionally abused myself by surrounding myself with unhappily married women who utilized me as a sort of e-tampon for all their heartache.
After a particular girl I was truly in love with (one of three in my entire life) ended our friendship in a permanent manner, I was so distraught I thought about ending it all. I was on Facebook in the computer lab on campus and was talking with one of those unhappily married women and she was just trying to be a friend but I flipped out and raged at her so hard, she accused me of a lot of really nasty (and probably true) things. I snapped. I had deleted my facebook account multiple times in the past, but this time was different. I decided no more. No more dealing with 300+ people who didn't care about me. I opened the friends tab and literally removed every person from my contact list, one by one. Family was oddly easy to remove because they are family and are therefore actual fixtures in my life. The hard part was clicking away people I knew I would never have contact with again. I knew if I removed myself from the Facebook world, they would never try to contact me with my phone number I knew they had. It was just going to be the end. It was extremely difficult but I was so outraged at how disrespected I felt, I just did it anyway and they are all gone now.
Then, I deleted my account. I knew with no friends on there, there would never be another reason to restart it. I would have to rebuild my e-life from total ground zero and I still don't have it in me. For the next week or so after that, I was the most productive I've been since attending DSC. My phone was dead for a large portion of that week and I didn't even notice. I didn't watch TV. I didn't own my own computer at the time. I just did homework and played my Xbox in offline mode. It's exactly what I needed at the time.
My plans for my media vacation was very simple: Guitar. Play more guitar. Play lots of guitar, and fast guitar, ane pretty guitar, and grunge guitar. I was going to head to a music shop and get a tabulature book of rock songs, or maybe just try and write my own thing.
Life overwhelmed me, though. The best laid plans of mice and men and all that. It's impossible to function in modern society without using new media. Impossible. You cannot succeed in life without the internet. 99% of jobs require you to do your application purely online and they don't even want to meet you face to face any more. Research papers that took weeks take minutes utilizing Google (and discretion.) And good luck attempting to date if you don't have text messaging. It just doesn't work. It can't happen.
So for all my bravado about being able to pry myself away from media and be "totally fine," I probably failed the spirit of this assignment harder than anyone else in the class. Go figure. I guess that in and of itself should be a great lesson to anyone attempting this in the future. Hubris is the downfall of many.
