I didn’t know that I had it in me. I didn’t know it was possible. I didn’t know it could be life-changing. I didn’t know it could have far reaching consequences. No I did not yet win the Nobel prize. For my life to change I literally didn’t have to travel the world, or have certain beings out of my life, I just had to delete three social media giants and battery draining (both my phone and mine) super houses from my phone and my life – Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And that was quite a revelation. Quite done with Insta filters I installed a couple of filters of my own!

And then, for a month or so I managed to yearn to know what everyone was up to. In the next month I still had some level of interest to know, for after all knowledge is power. Finally in the third month it’s not knowing that keeps me going, in fact when someone speaks these days I actually listen cause most of my information now comes literary from the word of the mouth, or newspapers and podcasts, again word of mouth. And my that one filter itself, a lot useless information stopped coming my way, those include irresistible offers and crazy products pedalled by influencers that now I know nothing of.

With that empty mind space, I have no clue about what my dear friends and dearer acquaintances have been up to, what they’ve been eating for breakfast, lunch and dinner, what they’ve been wearing as ootd and what milestones they or their kids have been crossing. That feels like I am a tad left out, in fact my Instagram page that I had happily been updating my recent work (as an architect, that was quite useful) has now halted, but I have moved my portfolio building offline and sometimes through a video on YouTube. I have begun doing a podcast on Spotify and would love for you to hear, but apart from that it has indeed been a lot of mindspace to get my stuff done in the day to day.

In all that going, I have terribly missed news from Insta but have found newspapers carrying stories, citing sources as Instagram! Looks like people have been simply become their own broadcasters and Instagram is the touted press conference. So easy then to build one’s own brand. While I have not been influenced by the gram lately I have been influenced by books, real people and events in and around the city. I haven’t yet gotten back to myself just yet I must say, though in this time I have discovered 3 grey hair on my head. Now I don’t know if it were always there and I hadn’t noticed or they sprung up now with the anxiety of not being on the gram and hence not knowing the happenings!!

Being the least informed person may have its ups, while we aren’t cramming the brain with information the brain gets a breather to make connections and hence get creative. Going by my painting output in the last three months, there have been creative juices flowing rather bountifully. In my six month challenge, given by my Dad, to stay off social media I am safely halfway through, and even with all the platinum blond flyaways quite comfortable and leaning towards keeping it this way for life!

Anti-social media = fully social personality ?

P.s this blog is still marketed by a tweet, just have not got to disabling the feature just yet. That is social media harakiri and would take a lot more of courage! Besides WordPress, YouTube and Spotify seem to have become my go-tos leaving images for my personal filing!