social sabbaticals

It was almost six o’clock and I was sat on my rainbow-coloured meditation cushion in the back garden, holding a cup of cacao. The cool air was dancing over my cheeks and the morning mist was rising to tickle my toes. I began smiling gratefully at the thought of a new day.

The birds were singing in the pine trees that towered over my little bungalow. I could hear the flapping of their wings and the rustling of their feathers as they nestled beneath the bright green leaves. Their innocent chorus began to echo amongst the clouds while the rest of the world stayed peacefully still. The world was ours.

I looked up. The sun was beginning to creep up over the rooftops of Billund. Cotton wool clouds drifted slowly through the vast and empty nothingness above me, just as thoughts were passing through my mind.

As I thought about the impermanence of those fluffy clouds and my passing thoughts, I was transported back to the hills of Mandalay. I felt the warmth of my tatty blanket wrapped around my toes as I sat cross-legged in a hall full of burping strangers, and aĺl I could hear was Goenke’s voice inside my head. “Anica, anica,” he said.

Taking a sabbatical from socials

Well it looks like those microblogs I promised are going to be sporadic rather than daily doses. Time is precious and as much as I love putting digital pen to paper, there’s a life to be lived – one that doesn’t involve staring at a screen. And I felt that more than ever when I recently took a month-long social media sabbatical.

The break from my newsfeeds was nothing short of heavenly. It gave me a time out from mundanity and insanity of our modern world, and it gave me time to practice what I’m always preaching; to embrace the power of now.

I cycled hundreds of miles through Jutland’s countryside, spent rainy evenings wandering around Billund in inappropriate footwear and sat on my garden terrace morning, noon and night, just to hear those birds sing.

I read books; Gabrielle Bernstein’s The Universe Has Your Back (which I wouldn’t particularly recommend), Letting Go by Richard Hawkins (which I definitely would recommend). I had Zoom cookathons, digital dates and invested in phone calls with Tier One friends and family. Everything about those social media free minutes were magic.

When I finally decided to log back in, it was more in order to efficiently share photos of my Danish adventures en masse than scroll through foodporn, TikTok dance routines and #ootds. And when I did, I realised I hadn’t really missed it at all.