2 weeks without social media. I was bored.

I now know kung-fu.

So I thought I'd take a month. I made it two weeks. I thought long and hard about whether or not I should go the extra two weeks, but I realized I learned all I was going to learn from being off for two weeks. Now, I was just punishing myself for no good reason.

So what did I learn? I learned that if I really wanted to, I could disconnect. There was the initial withdrawal.

And then there was the silence.

The utter silence I had in my head from not having everyone else's thoughts coming across my screen. I realized I had to work harder to get information, I had to go to more websites and read more articles just to get the gist of a story that Twitter could cover in a short blurb.

I learned that I missed my friends, acquaintances, and people of interest that I am accustomed to seeing on a daily. I learned that the people I call friends are mostly on a virtual space, which I'm not altogether sure if that's sad or not. That was after a week.

And then there was the silence.

I learned that being a spectator of the internet was not enough for me. I wanted to be involved. I missed putting up pictures on Instagram, I missed tweeting a joke I thought was funny, I missed asking a silly question and getting a sillier answer. I learned I don't want to disconnect.

I want to be a part of this world in the way I know how. I emphasize "this" because this world is a different world than the one from ten years ago. This world exists in 1's and 0's, and I enjoy it even with all the shit that comes along with it. It's easy to be disgusted with the internet, but like all things linked to humanity; the small amount of good that comes from people online using the net to scour satellite photos for a plane that has gone missing outweighs the disgusting nature of the comment section of any news feed.

And then there was the silence.

I am Hugh(ge) fan of tweeting!

Like Hugh being separated from the Borg, I was alone with my thoughts for the first time in about seven years. There were moments I enjoyed it and there were moments where I missed it. And when both those moments passed, I was just bored (not Borged).

After that first week I had no new revelations, no new sensations other than I'm just doing this thing now just to do it. All of a sudden I was wondering if I should come back early, and if I did, would it be defeating the purpose of this experiment. But more to the point, will people consider it me giving up?

And then there was the silence.

It dawned on me. No one gives a fuck if I come back early, cause no one gave a fuck when I left. There's no penalty for taking a sleeping pill and trying to masturbate while on it. And that's all this really was, a self-masturbatory experiment.

Only thing I see now is whether I cut this experiment short or if I succeed in the full month to masturbate on the sleeping pill, I'm just going to wake up sticky and a little bit of shame.

And then there'd be silence.

So I'm back. And to be honest, I learned what I always knew. It's a double-edged sword, this internet thing.

Have fun with it, but also, turn off your tech, for an hour. Go outside. Look at the sky. Close your eyes. And in the words of Depeche Mode.

Enjoy the silence.