Last month, I started my first 30-day challenge: I didn’t drink any alcohol for 30 days. In December, I’ll get rid of Twitter.
Before I tell you more about Twitter, I should probably tell you how that month without alcohol went. ?
It actually wasn’t too bad. I am not a big drinker, so this first challenge was probably an easy one for me. I usually have a whisky or some wine after a hard day at work and on weekends; this wasn’t hard to cut, although I will say that I cheated a bit and replaced alcohol with chocolate. I’ll tackle that addiction in January!
What was actually harder was to refuse alcohol when going out to meet a friend or when invited at a family dinner. That’s something I didn’t think about before the month began. When going out, I’m used to having a beer or a fröccs; asking for a soft drink when your friends are drinking beer is a bit weird. When invited at a family dinner, we drink whisky, pálinka and wine; it’s obviously a lot harder to refuse alcohol when you’re a guest. ?
But we survived, and it wasn’t that bad. Verdict: I’m not an addict. ?
Getting rid of Twitter, on the other hand, will be a lot more difficult. It was an obvious choice for my second challenge because it’s probably one of my worst addictions today. I don’t use it much when I’m at my computer, but it’s my go-to mobile app.
If I have even a few seconds of free time, I’ll pull up my phone and check Twitter. I know it’s a bad habit: it’s not polite when others are around, it’s a bad example to set for my daughter, and it doesn’t bring anything positive to my day. With 530 tweets this year so far, I’m not what you’d call a prolific tweeter. Most of my activity is reading, and monitoring a few keywords (mostly work-related, just to help folks with questions.)
Most of my feed is shared between politics, arguments, rants, and complaints. Nothing better to bring down your morale after a long day, right before to go to bed.
So why do I do it? It really feels like an addiction at this point: I know it’s bad for me, but I can’t stop myself. Until today. I’ve uninstalled the app from my phone, and logged out of Tweetdeck on my computer.
Let’s see how this month goes!
7 replies on “No Twitter in December”
Last time you posted about 30 day challenges, I said I want to do 30 days of being a strict vegan. 30 days fits neatly between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I’m on day 7. So far so good.
Nice, congrats!
May I ask where you’ve been finding ideas for meals, and recipes? I would really like to try this in one of my next 30 day challenges, but I have no idea how to cook anything without at least some butter, milk, or cream. ?
I’m not one to cook anything fancy so I’ve been eating mostly lots of fruit and stir-fried vegetables. I did look online and while there are lots of places to get vegan recipes, I was surprised to see that for me, Reddit offered some of the most useful ideas. https://www.reddit.com/r/veganrecipes/
Thanks! I’ll keep that link handy.
Congrats on finishing the first and tackling the second! Excited to see your results at the end of the year.
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I’ll see you on Plurk!
I uninstalled Twitter from my phone a week or so ago. It wasn’t premeditated, but more of a “why I am checking Twitter right now? It’s nothing good and not bringing my joy. Deleted.”
I didn’t cut it out from the desktop, but I don’t use it (or Facebook) all that often when at the desk. I’m interested in hearing how your habits change. For me, so far, I use the WordPress app more for the Reader to find content and been microblogging on my site more.
Next up is figuring out how to setup things so I could post only from the app (could I setup a only-Publicize-when-blank rule? Prefill the Twitter message with the first 100 characters of the post?) instead of needing to wp-admin’ing it.