Digital De-Clutter Day 1

I’m sitting here suffocating in calendars and planners. It’s not a bad way to die, actually.

Today is New Years Day and I’m a little hung over from too much champagne last night, but before I went to bed I remembered to delete from my phone: Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

I also deleted The New York Times and The Washington Post apps, and stopped all notifications to my watch. I will not get a haptick everytime Trump tweets something dangerous or insane.  Probably for the best.

The last email from Cal came on Thursday. Here’s the gist of it:

• Don’t log on to any social media accounts during the experiment.
• Don’t read news online.
• Don’t use the internet for entertainment. (no web surfing, YouTube videos, etc.)
• Restrict Text messaging if you’re a heavy user.
• No blogs, but you can live-stream movies and listen to podcasts.

Here are my adaptations. Social Media is gone, except for a daily Facebook check-in (notifications only) so see if anyone has inquired about yoga classes.

Today, Day One, I already had to jump on FB briefly to promote today’s Power Yoga class, and upload my monthly newsletter, but I got off quickly without checking anything else.

(So proud.)

Online news reading is gone, and I have to confess I missed it with my coffee this morning, but I’m into a good novel, The History of Love, so the pain of not having an Opinion piece to seethe over was assuaged. Somewhat.

I have decided to allow myself the Morning Joe podcast. It’s only 40 minutes and it will meet my need to know what’s going on in the world a little.

I’m really happy this cleanse allows podcasts because they’re the source of so much intellectual stim for me.

I’m not a big TV watcher anyway, nor do I use the internet for entertainment, (if you don’t count FB and Twitter and Insta) so that’s no hardship.

I also don’t read blogs, but I have committed to posting to this one every Monday for the year, so I’ll allow myself this indulgence.

When I got up, I checked my weather app. I looked at my Gmail inbox. And that was it.  It took me like, 5 minutes.

I can do this. I can.