As Sam Gamgee once said, Well, I'm back.

For the last (nearly) three weeks, my wife and I have taken a break from social media. It has been a good experience, and last night I took some time to reflect on it. Here are a few things I learned:

1. During the break, I found that I had a lot less clutter in my mind. I wasn't worrying through the day about depressing national news, Twitter controversies, Facebook rants, or other online annoyances outside my control. And although I was missing some things that I would have been interested in, it was better for a few days to reconnect with a quiet soul.

2. I found that I just don't need to know the day-to-day news from scores of distant friends and organizations. I'm thankful for my friends and for these organizations, but I have only so much mental energy to use each day, and when I see tidbits from scores of people and organizations I follow on Twitter, it takes a cumulative emotional toll. I have enough to think about with my wife and kids, my church friends, my students, and other people in my current situation, so I have taken some time to greatly reduce the number of people/organizations I'm following. The goal is to have a less cluttered mind and a more quiet soul.

3. When I got back online, I was amazed at the amount of outrage on Twitter. People tweet their outrage at this and their outrage about that--social justice causes, etc. Although the causes are often good, it's simply not healthy to constantly be feeding on all this outrage. Simply living a good, virtuous real life is probably a better way to bring about real social change than lots of passionate RTs.

4. Without the option of Twitter or Facebook, I spent more time doing more worthwhile things. I read hundreds of pages. I spent time working on a new online class that I'm teaching. I wrote some poetry. I spent more time in engaged conversation with my wife. I played soccer out in the yard with my kids. Et cetera. This time was much better spent than flipping through my Twitter feed once again.

5. I was reminded that real life doesn't take place online, but in the incarnate world. Stuff on Twitter seems SO IMPORTANT. But I don't need all of it. There was once a day when we just lived our lives instead of tweeting/instagramming/facebooking whatever we were doing. It was nice to reconnect with that world.

In the future, I plan to spend a lot less time on social media, and taking more of these social media fasts. Real life is waiting for me somewhere offline.

Okay, now I'm gonna shut my laptop and go live my life.