#NerdsUnite: The Ramblings of a Raconteuse (My Dirty Online Secret)
<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy Helenna. We met on twitter this week, and she's totes mcgotes one rad chiquita banana with a flare for all things flair! That's right, Helenna here is what we call an artsy fartsy nerd. She's a poet, into all things dramatic arts, and she's going to come on board to write each week about her love of said drama. Well not like actual drama drama, like some cat fight shit - but you get the idea.
I only have one thing left to say ... HIT IT HELENNA!!! </editorsnote>
#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @Helslevy
So…I have a confession to make. It’s about my dirty little online secret and I’m no longer ashamed to admit it.
Yes, four days ago I posted this to my facebook timeline:
At the time I totally meant it and had every intention of staying offline until my husband and I returned from Hawaii on January 11th.
I was going to take a full on real break from everything that even resembled work. See, my husband Barry and I are currently on our first real vacation since our honeymoon 5 1/2 years ago. I say “real vacation” because every trip we’ve taken from the time we got married until now has either been to see family, have meetings, or go to a film festival, and most of these trips lasted 3 or 4 days max. We were seriously overdue for some down time.
Now, at the time I posted that message I was thinking I would take a complete sabbatical from Twitter and Facebook, with the exception of writing my blog post for Talk Nerdy To Me Lover. aka) a “completely unplugged vacation.”
My friend Dane then responded by saying, “I triple dog dare you to stay off Facebook until mid-January. Ha! (I couldn’t do it either.)” That’s it! It was ON! I was going to do everything I could to stay off of Facebook to prove that I could.
Well…that lasted less then 24 hours…probably less then 12 really. Friends even called me out on it to which I replied:
In fairness it started with me jumping on to Twitter to complain to @Delta about their horrible customer service and the fact that we had a 9 HOUR DELAY for our flight to Hawaii because something was broken on the plane and they didn’t have any extra planes…yeah…a lot of mad people. But the cool part was that @DeltaAssist was super helpful and we ended up getting a little more compensation than the rest of the people who, I’m sure weren’t using social media to get some money back.
Anyways, once we finally got to Hawaii, I posted a picture here and there ...
and jumped back onto Facebook to see what was going on with my friends, politics, new media, film, tv, and life in general. At first, I felt guilty about it thinking “how pathetic am I that I can’t stay off of Facebook or Twitter for a couple of days let alone 11!” But then, I started to think differently about it.
I wanted to stay connected.
So much of my life at this point, my career, and my relationships revolve around the use of social media and staying connected to what is going on. After all, at one point I did document my entire life for my vlog and have been so used to sharing my life with people since then.
Why on earth was I thinking this was bad?
Yes, it was neccessary for me to take a break from “work” and from my everyday tasks, but cutting myself off from all things online felt like a jail sentence rather than freedom.
Why was I punishing myself? And why did it actually, truly feel like punishment?
No matter how I look at it, social media is a huge part of my life. In no way does it take away from my “real life” experiences, instead it actually amplifies them. Social media brings a heightened awareness to everything I experience and I think that’s pretty darn cool. Do I need to find some balance in my everyday life? Yes, definitely. I need to go to yoga more, read more books (with paper pages and everything), and spend more time hiking or talking a stroll around the neighborhood without my iphone being attached to my hand. These things are all true.
But, a lot of people worry that computers and iphones are causing us to be disconnected from reality and from each other. While I can agree with this to a certain point, I would also argue the opposite. I’ve found that because of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc… my real world relationships and connections have grown and strengthened.
I know this is big topic to debate which would take a heck of a long blog post, so I’m going to leave this up in the air for now to mull over. Because afterall…I’m on vacation…but shhh, don’t tell “the internets…”
#xoxo
- hels
aka) Helenna Santos Levy
P.S. If you want to hang with me in the ol’ digital world, tweet me out at @helslevy and stop in at: http://www.helennasblog.com