Offline for self-care and me time

It's somewhat ironic to be typing this now but the first story here will be about not being available online.

I was probably one of the first thousand users of Linked In and Facebook when they appeared on the global scene two decades ago. Facebook became my obsessive compulsive companion. It was a different FB then - there was a wall, the apps were visible all on one space - weather app, chess, trivia... you name it. We could poke people. How banal it all seems today. At one stage we were playing Warbook non-stop on FB. I was working in Hanoi then and gave a friend who had more time access to my account so that he could play using my Warbook alias - we were part of the Milk and Cheese Alliance that comprised of global players who simply wanted to have a fair game of taking over the world on Warbook without everyone else attacking us. It was a global 24 hour game and very simply set up - no fancy graphics or need for video, just simple counting and allocating resources. I have memories of seeking respite from the sweltering Vietnamese summer in a cafe, using the public computer there during the weekends as my friend and I played Warbook next to each other.

Fast forward 10 years later and I was increasingly resisting social media. Instagram and Twitter I simply didn't get. I hated the vanity of FB sharing pictures of friends and their kids. I was posting about politics and noticing that no one bothered. I went from posting pictures of my trips to taking them all down and resisting any personal updates unless it was a political opinion. Eventually, I stopped using FB. Linked In went thru a slightly different trajectory. Hardly anyone was using it until about a decade ago. Working in corporate communication for big multinationals meant it was the hazard of the job. It went from being a space of learning new things to self-aggrandisement tinged with coopting issues for corporate profit. Eventually I turned off all notifications.

Then came October, then November then..... Anguish over my the welfare of friends in Gaza, was followed by grief, despair and rage. Once I decided that I was not going to moderate my opinions anymore for the mainstream German audience, I needed to connect with the social movement locally. I searched for my passwords and relaunched Instagram, kicked out all my soon-to-be ex-colleagues and got active. In parallel, I slowly checked back in on FB and learned sadly that several ex-colleagues from my former life had passed on, which explained the unanswered messages and silence. I resolved to check back in more often. Imagine going back to FB because of FOMO fears grounded in the macabre. So I have a bit of a bipolar part one and part two setup on social media. A very private pre-October 2023 Facebook account with family and contacts from before ~2017 and a completely public Instagram/Threads account that I do dumbscrolling and oversharing on, where the 99% of the people I am connected with date from 2024.

And now I have discovered WorldPulse. Thankfully or unfortunately, depending on one's perspective, the mobile app is not available in Germany. So I only use this on a desktop. Initial observations after being here sporadically for only a week tell me it has great potential to inspire, motivate and act as a safe support space for women globally, but especially those whose voices are least heard in the "normal" systems we live in. At the same time, I am wary of adding yet another space on which to gather more information and notifications on my brain matter and time. I have two different browsers open and 70 tabs on each of those. The state of my browsers reflect the state of my physical desk and apartment - papers, notes, stories, books strewn all over the place. What is not visible is the podcast list I have and the ongoing intelligence analysis I follow while my phone keeps charging each day. I am an information junkie in need of a detox. And I discovered WorldPulse late in life.

I always prided myself on being able to put my phone down. I am quite obsessive about a circular economy etc and that means I resisted the smart phone until it came to me via work. My personal mobile phones were always inherited and I try to make them last. As the battery quality dwindles, I begin to delete apps, keeping only the absolute essentials. I have down times set up and have restricted my combined social media usage to 1 hour 15 minutes each day. I do not enable Instagram and co for mobile on-the-go data use. Yet, I confess, I have been overriding those self-imposed restrictions over the past week as I met more people at protests and established connections. Over the last two weeks, my social media usage has more than tripled. My podcast list has doubled and my head is exploding.

But I need to breathe and meditate. It is 30 degrees and sunny outside. I need to self-regulate and focus on my own spiritual needs. Part of being me today is dealing with anger at a society I once felt I respected and trusted. This is family, this has been home for 12 years. And my anger, while acknowledged, needs to be managed lest I do unto others the injustice I accuse many here of.

I need to clean my physical desk first. Then my browsers. With that tidied I will walk into the next week with a clearer head as to what I need to do. So I will be largely offline. My mobile phone will be switched off. My pc shut down for a few hours today and tomorrow. I will cheat a bit as I do have an iPad with much of the same apps minus WhatsApp. I will continue reading a couple of the 10 books I am halfway through and hopefully, like my to-do list, actually finish a couple of them - The Nutmeg's Curse is almost finished, along with the officially authorised biography of Margaret Thatcher - I did say I was a bit bipolar.