I “Unplugged” and It Was Simultaneously Fantastic and Horrifying

So I kind of unplugged. I don’t think I get full credit, but I at least want partial credit.

I went home last Friday because I was just very done with the environment at school. This was a fantastic decision on my part. Home means hiding at my house without makeup on all day while my mom offers to make me a platter of snacks every 35 minutes.

Aside from snacks, part of the point of going home was to just ignore everything Hopkins-related for as long as humanly possible. I wanted to “escape,” like when couples go to Sandals resorts. I went to Northwest Ohio which is slightly different, but I think it’s still the same general concept.

I deleted Snapchat when I got to the airport in Baltimore and I felt free. I said, Good tidings to you, Tiny White Ghost, but I am an adult who is going on her equivalent of a luxury beach vacation, and I need not be reminded of university shenanigans or the activities of that guy named Doug I met in Florida in 2014. I deleted the Facebook app awhile back. I would still say I spend the same amount of time on Facebook because I just go on it on my Safari browser, so maybe that wasn’t that much of change but it’s the principle of the thing. The Instagram app was moved as far away from the home screen of my phone as possible, and I settled in for a fun 90 minutes of pretending to be asleep so I didn’t have to talk to any flight attendants.

I landed and texted my mom. She came and got me, then I put my phone back on airplane mode. SPOILER ALERT: I was no longer on an airplane.

I kept my phone on either airplane mode or completely shut down for three or four days maybe. The first day I kept clicking it to see if anyone had texted me. I kept feeling like a loser because my phone obviously wasn’t receiving messages on airplane mode, so I stuck it in my room the next day and left it there.

The reason I only get partial credit is because I would text people occasionally off of my laptop or reply to Facebook messages as well. I think it’s nearly impossible to completely “unplug.” I wouldn’t die if I unplugged completely, but people would definitely think I was dead which is a general assumption I look to avoid. Just for the purpose of convenience.

Also I somehow managed to order a ton of things online despite this cleanse, so it’s definitely not foolproof.

In general, however, incredibly empowering. Also, incredibly stressful, though I got over the stress more so around Day Two.

DAMMIT. I just realized I should have kept a video diary throughout the whole thing. Day One: I have no idea what my friends ate for lunch today and the curiosity nearly has me giving in. Did Abigail eat a bagel? Did Octavia eat those weird vegetarian meatballs she likes?  Missed opportunities.

For now, I am back to fully embracing the digital lifestyle. I would go so far as to call myself a digital slut, a harlot, if you will. I could be an axe murderer, so this seems fairly harmless.