It’s day 3 of my 5 day Social media fast.

To be completely honest, I’m a little ashamed of myself.

I know I am always on my phone, everyone is always on their phone, but the extent to which I wasting valuable living time I had no idea.

In the morning when I wake up, either by alarm or nature, I reach for my phone and spend 5-10 minutes scrolling through the overnight posts. First on Facebook, then Instagram story, then Instagram general. Before I go to sleep, I go through the day of Snapchat.

But yesterday when I woke up, I lay there for a minute or so and thought of reaching for my phone. “Not much point” I thought, “I should journal or something”, dismissing those thoughts I decided to spend the extra 10 minutes snuggling with my dogs.

My usual routine when I’m working in the afternoon is to have a coffee, a scroll and throw the ball with my over zealous kelpie. I made it to the bottom of my coffee before it went cold, the dog was exhausted from not having to wait for me in between ball tosses and it seemed to only take 10 minutes, not the usual 30-40 minutes. Hmm, ok, it’s almost an hour earlier than normal so I guess I’m going to the gym.

I sat on a different spin bike. Someone was on my normal one. The reflection of my bright pink singlet bounced around the mirrored corner like a distortion mirror in a haunted house from an old American movie. My first impulse was to take a selfie of all three of me. “Not much point, no where to post it,” and off to finish my weights workout I went.

Still way ahead of time when I got home, I had time to have breakfast, clean the kitchen, fold some washing, put on some more washing and make dinner to take to work without once stressing about being late or having to rush to work. In fact, I stopped to get lunch and fuel and I was still a full 10 minutes early for the start of my shift.

When I got in my car to come home, I didn’t have to charge my phone, I still had 80% battery.

When I got home, I had a conversation with my husband. An actual “how was your day” conversation, as I paced around the house trying to reach my step goal (I’m on a 27 day streak!).

Do I miss the socials? Not really. I miss flicking through and looking for pictures of my nephew or trendy people’s food posts but I know I’ll see them all in a few days. Maybe I don’t need to be scrolling through every second of every day. It isn’t going anywhere after all.