January Challenge: How'd I do?

Hey there, hi there, ho there! Sorry I'm bloggin' atcha late. I did not feel well last night and I hadn't gotten around finishing another post that I'm working on for ya. I realized last night when planning that I haven't updated you on the January Challenge. I am going to say that it was a success and a failure all at the same time.

To refresh you, Bryan and I decided to stay off social media as much as possible throughout the month of January. This included Facebook, Instagram and Reddit, which are our main time-wasters. I'm going to come right out there and say that it was hard. Mostly because it's just muscle memory. I would find myself on Facebook and not even realize what I was doing! Bryan caught me more than a few times and I would be astounded that I would brainlessly just click to open any of these sites. He didn't even believe that I wouldn't even realize I was doing it, it felt so natural to me.

Within the first week, Bryan abandoned the challenge, saying that I wasn't taking it seriously (oh, I was) but I kept going. I became hyper aware of how often I wanted to get on the apps to see what people were up too. I get notifications when I'm tagged or when my sisters update, so I could follow up on them and I didn't feel bad about that at all. I also shared some of their posts to help them out if needed. My main problem was just scrolling. I would want to just scroll through everything to see what people were saying when I had no business being on the app. I feel like by the third week, my habit to pick up my phone and scroll through Instagram or Facebook was broken. Now, it's uncomfortable to me to get on either app to scroll. It's extremely overwhelming. Isn't that so weird!

It came to the point where people would forget that I didn't know what they were talking about. I would have to remind them that I wasn't on social media and sometimes they would look annoyed that they had to reiterate their update or story because I didn't know. That was seriously weird.

A good outcome of staying off of Facebook was that I talked to my oldest sister Alison multiple times on the phone in January. Two of those times I am the one that initiated contact. You may not realize what a huge deal this is but I don't like talking on the phone. At all. I rarely call my sister and when she (or really anyone) calls me I always hesitate on answering the phone because it's so much work. Obviously, I am a horrible person. However, once on the phone I so enjoy my conversations catching up (especially with Alison) that I can talk forever. What I'm saying is, I don't make any sense.

I also talked to my second oldest sister Kari on the phone multiple times which is weird since we live like two miles from her, but hey, it works.

Now, I bet you are wondering what the failure part of my challenge was? I found other ways to occupy myself on my phone. I played Wind Up Knight, which is addicting and amazing and also makes me RAAAAGE. I followed more people on YouTube. I followed the people that I follow on YouTube on Google+. I downloaded grocery apps galore. I text messaged more, I looked at shopping apps more. In all honesty, I do think I gained a lot of time staying off of Instagram and Facebook but I don't think I put that time to good use. I still think I wasted a lot of time on my phone, although probably not as much.

I would say that the best part of limiting my phone use was that I am writing more. I've been working on my book. I've been keeping up with posts on my blog. I have started getting healthy and being active again. I spend more time playing with Shepherd and teaching him how to walk and to find his nose. I do not want him to remember me with a screen in my face and I also don't want him to be a kid that is obsessed with phones, tablets or TV.

That said, I'm going to say I passed the January Challenge. Any time saved from being on social media less is a big fat WIN!