Helen The Great!

My Digital Cleanse…Experience

Small Victories

For lack of a better project to take on, over which I’d have complete control, I decided to take the Digital Cleanse that John Mayer proposed on his blog before the new year. Prior to taking on this task tho I decided a few days before New Year’s Eve I decided that I would set yet another small goal of reaching 3000 tweets by 12:00am Jan. 1, 2010. At the time I had about 2600 some odd posts…obviously not an impossible goal seeing as I reached it even a few minutes prior to the stroke of midnight at that! Small victory, but needless to say I had tweeted so much in about the span of 48 hours I was all tweeted out so a break was welcome, but the cleanse included more than just tweeting. It also included texting and any other social network including facebook, myspace, tumblr, etc. As well as E-mailing from cell phones (which I also was not so hard because I dont do it).

Texting/Tweeting

The hardest of the purging of digital usage had to be texting. I text ALL THE TIME literally! My cell phone (LG vue) holds a message memory capacity of sent and received messages of about 170 and I end up having to delete messages at least once a day *a lot of the time due to tweets* but text messages none the less…so to make matters easier I turned off my mobile tweet updates..that cut out a good 60% of my texting as it were…now how on earth was I going to resist the urge to text people when I found something funny or felt lonely or whatever other reason I text…I had to use self control, And in doing so I learned a lot about myself…ironically as I tweeted a little earlier…”Twitter is my boyfriend and Facebook is my Bytch” I say this because what I learned was whenever I feel emotional for any reason (happy sad mad etc.) I tweet or text a random person in my phone *mostly my sister* and even if I am not expressing exactly what my emotions are at the time I would do it out of lack of another medium to vent, rant, or just plain be random. At the beginning of the week I thought the week would never end and often had urges through out the day to send texts for whatever reason. I would actually say to myself, “Im going to send that to so and so…or…I would totally tweet about this if I wasn’t doing this Cleanse thing.” and then I would put it out of my mind and not text it…but as the days went on these urges became less and less and eventually not at all.

Facebook

Anyone who knows Helen (That’s me) knows that even if I don’t show any recent activity on Facebook constantly I am forever at least checking to see If I do…I just like to know what’s going on and what other people are doing…why because at this point in my life…I dont have very much of a life…so I like to watch other people’s lives if nothing else. So nearly needless to say at this point because of the Digital Cleanse my days were filled with lonely boredom…and yes, they were for the most part I watched a great deal of television and slept…and ate (of course).

Revelation

Once I decided that I was going to make the digital cleanse a bigger small victory than reaching my tweet count goal my days did seem as long and lonely as they had when I just sat around and thought about texting, tweeting, and facebooking. I actually did at some point go over in my head to some effect exactly what Im putting into words right now. THEN I got up and i did things that would lead to even larger victories though out this new year.

I found myself awake at 4:30am on Wednesday morning not being able to go back to sleep for anything, but I couldn’t figure out why. So I got up and sat down at the computer and checked my e-mail…pretty much all junk…nothing really but “scholarship opportunities” from the government and Jobs.com stuff…the usual and then I said to myself “HEY!, since you are up and clearly not going to sleep anytime soon, check on jobs in Tuscaloosa…temp agencies ANYTHING, and look into enrolling in a couple online classes this semester…I mean, why not, right?!” So that’s just what I did. Once I got done uploading my resume to various sites and looking at potential classes I lay back down and surprisingly enough drifted off to sleep for at least a little while before I had to get up at 7 and get ready so I could take my car to the shop to be looked at.

Moral of the story…not being able to hide my true feelings and anxieties about my life situation behind random 140 character blurbs or whine to my older sister via text (whom by the way I was staying with at the time over the holiday and talking face to face is never any good) I had to face them and do something about them or at least take major steps toward overcoming them or I feared, I’d never get a good night’s rest again!

My Return

When I woke up on the morning of Jan. 8, 2010 at my mother’s home (@ about 4:30am) I tired to wait before I tweeted or text’d because I really just wanted to go back to sleep, but I wasnt awake for the same reasons that had kept me up the night at my sister’s house (this time it was just plain discomfort) so as much as I tried to wait until usual waking hours (for other people) I just couldn’t wait to sound my return to the digital world, after all, it helps me sleep! So I looked back on what I had missed over the week and joined back in the conversation as if I had never gone anywhere.

I cant say that the Digital Cleanse changed my life or anything but it did give me a bit of perspective and for that Im greatful…Im not all turned around and am not going to stop tweeting and texting and facebooking, I just am now more aware of why I do these things and can improve all areas accordingly…as well as add one more to my small victories list…I am glad that I did this. I realized (I’m not sure I was totally confident in this fact prior to the DC) that I am capable of doing ANYTHING that I set my mind to…and everything starts with baby steps.

In order to win big you gotta start small so that’s what I’m doing starting small because I feel like this year holds big things for me and I am more than ready to take on anything that comes my way!!! :)

HOPE

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Okay, so I Found this. I wrote it February 22, 2008. WOW! So here you are from my 20 year old self. My Thoughts as I sat bored at work and scribbled on a brown napkin.

Hope

I sit and wonder where has time gone
Twenty years somehow, doesn’t seem that long
Will I make it to tomorrow, only God can tell
I can only hope to see another day here on Earth,
instead of Heaven or Hell.
HOPE to see another day, ‘cause we know not where we’ll go
—HOPE it’s Heaven, but who can surely know
Not you or me, but only He who looks down from up above.
Hope not Hell, because—Well—
They say its worse than here
So we HOPE for a future here on Earth until we know for sure
That when we die, God rest our souls, He’ll open up the door
and let us in the pearly gates, For liars and enemies we did not hate—
but prayed for them and HOPE they too shall reach a joyous fate
And on our Paths we did not judge, but helped someone to see the light
That when they reach their final day they too may take flight
On wings of angels flying high and be seated with GOD
when we all die.

Nights like this… I I wish…raindrops would fa a a a aalll…

No, seriously though. I’ve gotten accustomed to spending my nights sans a bed partner… It gets easier as time goes by, but some nights you just wish you had somebody there to fil the space. Sadly, tonight is one of those nights.

So here I lay watching this poker tournament (more like its watching me) and looking at the wall contemplating the world. Where did I go wrong? Who did I piss off fir this to be my life?

I was told tonight that I am crazy for not taking up an offer from a past flame to “be a family”. Am I? I know not. I was also told that I’m “fucked up” for not giving said past flame yet a third chance to have my heart and that I am holding the past over his head. RIGHT! I mean, okay…maybe you DID change kudos to you…too little too late! I mean, I aporeciate the effort, but now that I have THRICE declined your offer could you please keep it moving? Like, seriously!

I understand that if you are truly sincere in your efforts my rejection may sting a little, but you WILL NOT be MAD at me and go off on a rampage of what a stupid, fucked up person I’m being for, politely even, telling you that I am not interested!

No, sir. You will NOT!

I will not be subjected to your verbal thrashings because you feel wronged that I no longer have the same feelings for you as I did before! Things change. The time for anger has long passed… The time for forward motion is upon us and I wish you would do just that…MOVE THE FUCK ON!

You say you’ve changed but for the past two years you’ve done nothing but show me the same old you! And to be frank I don’t really like you all that much.

Wow, that just took in a while different direction that where I intended. I just had to get that off my chest…Thanks for reading…stay tuned for more Sunshiney posts… I promise, they are coming!

Is this thing on???

Okay, so I’m clearly a blogging FAILURE. I’ve had this Tumblr for a couple years now and hadley EVER log on. In fact, to do so just now I had to reset my password! I have a blogspot that I have posted to only twice. I ready would like to do better, but I’m going to need some help. I don’t want to blog just for the hell of it…I want people to read it! Otherwise I could just write my feelings on a piece of paper and lock them away, right? I’m sure I could be great at this…I just know it! So with a new month beginning tommorow so will my new effort to be a better blogger! So FOLLOW MY BLOG(s) I think I’ll use Tumblr for daily shorter posts, photos and things like that. And http://HAnnaKexposed.blogspot.com will be reserved for the longer, perhaps only weekly “rant” post or something. Like that…

Anywho, we’ll see how long this lasts! Hopefully it will work and I can finally say that I succeeded at something!