Two things I’ve done lately that made life better. YMMV

YMMV means “your mileage may vary.” It’s a disclaimer of sorts. Your specific outcome, if you try these things, might not make your life better.

I’m never sure what internet lingo is mainstream enough to use that most people reading it would understand.*

On to the things!

1. Cut way back on the social medias

Social media, for me, is a producer of envy and a waster of time. It’s so easy to scroll and feel jealous. The author of The Art of the Good Life made me realize that. Someone I met a few times in the past is getting married and I haven’t had a boyfriend in many years? Hello, envy. Infinite scroll makes it hard to know when to stop and it’s easy to go back to check if there’s anything new. We meet again, timewaster.

I deleted the Instagram app from my phone six months ago and don’t think you can upload photos from your laptop. Can you?

I never really got into Twitter, except to occasionally read Seth Abramson’s feed. He’s a lawyer who talks about the president’s legal troubles. But when I read him, I’m convinced that any day now, something major will happen. I solved this problem by logging out of Twitter. If I have to input my password, it delays me long enough to realize I don’t want to go on Twitter.

I’ve never had the Facebook app installed on my phone, but I installed Facebook Feed Eradicator for my laptop. I don’t like seeing everyone’s…everything shoved in my face, but I can’t quite make myself quit Facebook altogether. Here’s my list for why I’m staying.

“The trouble with leaving Facebook is that we like Facebook.“

Things I like about Facebook

1. A Facebook group I’ve grown rather fond of: My secret Facebook coven.
2. Another Facebook group I’ve grown rather fond of: Geeky gals.
3. People create events on Facebook and invite me to things there. If I’m not on Facebook, they forget that I exist and don’t invite me to stuff. I love being invited to stuff.
4. When I’m traveling, I can tell my Facebook friends where I am and then I can find friends of friends in different parts of the planet.
5. I should have a Facebook page because I have a blog, right? My 600700 Facebook followers won’t remember I exist unless Facebook reminds them that I do after I publish an article. Whoops. I just realized I never shared my last article. Let me go do that now.
6. Facebook messenger is probably the best feature. I can get in touch with someone whose email or phone number I don’t have or someone who doesn’t have my email or phone number can get in touch with me.

I’m keeping Facebook, but I hate Facebook. A friend I hadn’t talked to in years messaged me on there recently: “Your life looks amazing.”

Looks can be deceiving. You only see the paragliding in Colombia and the articles about my early retirement and the weddings I attend. Okay, life is pretty amazing.

But it’s my best face I’m showing you. Existence still has potholes.

Social media makes it too easy to compare my struggles to your triumphs. That’s not a fair comparison. Comparison is the thief of joy and Facebook arms that thief with an AK-47.

Plus, the internet is shallow and wants to hijack my attention span with dopamine jabs. The world keeps waving its various hands at me, shouting my name, and vying for my precious focus. That’s all I have and that’s all they want. If I don’t guard this prize, someone pries it from my hands without me realizing.

Avoiding social media helps.

2. Keep my phone (and any electronics) out of the bedroom.

Somehow, months back, I fell into the habit of looking at my phone before I went to bed and as soon as I woke up in the morning.

Time spent in bed scrolling and squinting at my screen feels like wasted time. My pupils, the part of my eye that lets in light, were unhappy and my precious attention span I mentioned above felt dead.

A major life goal is to minimize the time that I spend staring at screens. Instead of looking at a screen, I want to be out in the world socializing and observing and hanging out with other people and animals and nature. Or reading an engrossing book. Or meditating, cleaning, cooking, showering, moisturizing. Really anything is better. Major life goal.

Naturally, I’m terrible at it.

My laptop is my biggest problem. I write on this for a few hours a day, do workout videos staring at this, and use screen time for other administrative tasks like filing taxes, answering email (sorry, I’m painfully bad at this), and planning adventures, all with my eyeballs directed at this thing.

But, for my phone, barring it from my bedroom, keeping it mostly on silent, and always carrying a book helps me from staring at it too much. I don’t mind texting to make plans, but any time spent on the internet on my phone is bad time.

A good way to minimize laptop time is to get out of my apartment and away from it.

In another effort to minimize screen time, I use Feedly.com for the people I want to keep up with and the easy entertainment of reading little bits of blogs. It’s on my laptop, so it’s still a screen, but it feels more contained.

What’s on your Feedly?

Do you use a feed reader? Is there anything you have on there that you would recommend? Whenever I add a new blog or site to my Feedly, I tend to cull one or two from what I already have to not overwhelm me. Here’s my current Feedly.

Comics

1. Itchy Feet – a travel and language comic
2. Poorly drawn lines – a comic with lines that aren’t drawn terribly, in my opinion
3. Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal – a comic about…everything
4. The Oatmeal – another comic.
5. What if? – serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions
6. xkcd – a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language

Fitness

1. Mark’s Daily Apple – Primal living in the modern world
2. Nerdfitness – Level up your life

Writing

1. Captain Awkward – Advice. Staircase Wit. Faux Pas. Movies.
2. Gretchen Rubin’s blog – writing about happiness
3. James Clear – writing about habits
4. jlcollins – The Simple Path to Wealth
5. Kindlepreneur – Book marketing for self-publishing authors. [I never actually click on these articles to read; I only aspire to.]
6. Laura Vanderkam – writing about time management, life, careers, and family
7. The Bloggess – Like Mother Theresa, only better
8. Thepowerofthrift.com – Huzzah! I should come up with a better tagline.
9. Uncommondream.com – Life is canvas

Misc.

1. What Kate wore – Following the style of the Duchess of Cambridge, formerly Kate Middleton
2. iheartorganizing – Family. Home. Life.

*Internet lingo that I think most people would understand

• LOL is definitely on the list.
  • Stands for laughing out loud, but means the person thinks something is generally humorous, but is probably not audibly chuckling like an alien observer would assume. But maybe that’s what I’m doing wrong in life and I should laugh out loud more.

• TL;DR?
  • Stands for too long; didn’t read. It’s the summary the author provides the reader who thinks the text is too long and doesn’t want to read the whole thing. Pretty self explanatory and lets you use a semicolon.

• YMMV
  • I’m including this on the list so I can feel okay with keeping it in my title.