3 Months

May 21

Ok. I’m back on Facebook. I’m not really sure what that means. Does it mean I’m active again? Posting. Interacting. Encouraging. Receive encouragement. I dont know. Ill take it as it comes.

It feels kind of awkward. Almost like pitching up at a party you weren’t invited to…

It feels kind of awkward. Almost like pitching up at a party you weren’t invited to… [Hopefully not the party pooper...]

But it was a good experience being away.

The biggest things I have learned from Facebook:

  • It is a BAD manager. I will have to manage it or it will swallow me up.
  • It will try and give me identity, but that is the one of people. Not the real one.
  • It can create the most selfish culture on the web.
  • It is a great marketing tool… but not the Alpha and Omega [traffic to me et al stayed the same without it]
  • It is a powerful tool to influence people [we all have influence with Facebook]

I’ll do one or more posts of my experience back on Facebook in a week or two.

Steyn Viljoen

Author me
Category living life., unplugged
Comments No Comments

Week 11: New Creativity

May 17

Next week it will be 3 months since I have been on Facebook.

In the past 2 weeks I have come to realize that my absence from FB has played a major role in my levels of creativity.

I wanted to share my thoughts with the world. Quickly. WordPress wasn’t enough, since it is too tedious. And Twitter is too cluttered with people who market their products or work [I'm one of those people...-]

So… this is where my creativity started to flow. I had this idea of building an app where people can share there wisdom with the rest of the world. No links. No click throughs. Just pure wisdom.

I decided to start working on a few concept designs. Below are 2 screenshots of this concept. It’s a work in progress, but I’m getting there.

Ill do a proper Design Post on my Behance Profile in a few days…


Author me
Category unplugged
Comments No Comments

Week 3

Apr 17

It’s been 3 weeks now that I’ve been away from Facebook.

And the last 3 weeks I have also been without internet at home. That in itself has also been quite an experience. It’s amazing how much you get done if you dont have internet [I've read 2 and a half books already].

The greatest thing that I have started to realize is that digital platforms are here to stay. It will be integrated into our everyday lives. It will become part of us.

Way back when the radio came out, people gathered around it each evening for entertainment purposes. Now it is with us everyday. Everywhere.

Digital devices and platforms will take the same route. And I say digital devices and not social media, because I believe that social media is just and expression of technology. Social media [as we know it today] might not last, but it certainly will be replaced by something that will have a greater part of our lives.

And it might not even be a bad thing. That is how things changes. That is how things will be.

The most important part of any change is not whether it is good or bad, but whether I will allow it to master my life. Change is inevitable. And yes, I know, it is a cliche. But it is. It is real.

However, I will not allow it to master my life and steal from what matters most… Balance… [I'll write about this in the next unplugged post.]

So for now, I will explore the absence of Facebook for a little while more…

me.

Author me
Category living life., unplugged
Comments No Comments
Tags , , , , ,

Unplugged

Mar 05

When I stopped at a robot yesterday, I took out my phone for the latest news on Facebook & Twitter. Over lunch time, I did the same. When I stood in the shopping queue, I couldn’t resist. When a conversation got boring, I found myself tempted to do it again. In church. Before I went to bed. When I woke up this morning. While I prepared my breakfast.

Crazy!

It’s as if I dont have anything better to do…

I have become so consumed by this digital world. Addicted to it.

I’m about to do an experiment: I will unplug myself from social media for a while. I dont know how long yet… One month. Two months. A Year.

But I want to find out what are the effects. I want to see what’s on the flip side of social media again. As it was without. Can one really go without it in a digital age such as this? What are the alternatives?

I will blog about this experiment on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, but I wont publish it on Facebook or Twitter. If you want to follow it, you will have to check back in. I have created a special category for it called unplugged…

See you on the flip side of social media…

me.

Author me
Category living life., unplugged
Comments No Comments
Tags , , , , ,