It was when I quit social networks that I knew how they’re truly addicting. I felt something was missing from my life. I missed communicating with friends I made, I missed writing about whatever came to my mind, and I was opening the web sites randomly out of habit only to realize I no longer have anything there.

I signed up again a few times because I couldn’t tolerate the situation. I was too addicted to social networks to be able to function like a normal person. The addiction to constantly writing or reading about random things and being virtually and digitally social prevented me to do anything meaningful, like reading more books, long articles, or even get some shut-eye.

I was an addict. Just like a heroin addict, that can’t function normally in society, I was having problems in society. I couldn’t have a focused meaningful conversation with people, I couldn’t enjoy my environment, I couldn’t enjoy the company of people around me, and I was looking at a screen all the time, even though there was nothing for me there.

I used to be very relaxed. I still don’t get angry easily or soon. However, lately, I realized that I’m getting worried about little things pretty easy and too much.

Contrary to how I was before, I’m now stressed all the time about little unimportant details or situations I got myself into. I came to realization that I must train myself to deal with what I can’t control.

The past two weeks were stressful for me. I got in some situations that were out of my control and I was mistaken all the time, day and night. It was so intense for me that friends around me were trying to comfort me and they were worried that I get sick from overthinking.

Deep down I knew it was going to be fine and no major disappointment will occur but I still couldn’t control my thoughts and get rid of the overwhelming pressure that I put on myself.

It was at my lowest point at that time that I said to myself I have to put an end to it. It must stop and it must be controlled.

I went to my favorite cafe, ordered my favorite cold-brewed coffee, asked the barista to put on my favorite music, and closed my eyes. I started my training.

It’s simple. It’s what I’m used to do when I can’t sleep. I close my eyes and imagine bright dots. Each dot represents one of my weaknesses or undesirable situations. Then I create an imaginary box and put all of those dots inside the box. Then I try to force those dots out of the box to empty my head from bad thoughts. It may take time but it’s effective, at least for me.

I did it while I was surrounded by my friends and it worked. Proving to myself that I can do it when I want and I can regain control over myself.

I’m back home right now, at the end of my vacation. I’m relaxed, not completely without stress, but not miserable. The amount of stress and pressure on me is back to normal but I didn’t stop my training.

I have to continue my training and I have to have control over what impacts me. I may not be done with the training but I’m already happy.

As I’m surrounded by my like-minded people, who care about software freedom and privacy, I’m usually questioned about why I’m not on social networks and sometimes get suggestions about what social network may suit me.

I have to explain to them that my problem is not with a certain network, no matter how ethical they might be, but rather is with the essence of social networks. My problem with social networks is that they’re social and they require some bare minimum that I’m uncomfortable with.

Social networks always have a system of rating and assessment of posts and people. They always have like or upvote/downvote buttons, they show following/follower counts and they rely on people to interact with each other and remain active to be able to keep up with the network and the people.

These are the bare minimum requirements of a social network to become functional for people. People love these and if a network misses these so-called features, people consider it broken. A social network with no follower/following count, no like button, no stats, and no kind of rating people is, in my honest opinion, a true “social” network.

My favorite social network will not mind-play people to compete with each other to care about the following/follower rate or how many likes their posts get; but rather tries to connect people solely based on their posts and favorite communities. My favorite social network won’t tell you that your post is good enough (so it got enough likes) or you’re not likeable (because you get few followers), it’ll tell you how beneficial or important you are for your community based on the interactions you have with other members and real communications, not by likes your post gets.

A social network should be about connecting people and members of communities, not about trying to make people compete in pointless mind-games. My problem with social networks is that they’re addictive and they somehow force you to remain active day after day but my favorite social network helps you be active whenever you need or whenever it suits you.

My favorite social network won’t exclude any people, however it moderates the communities and people. The network, which surely should be decentralized, will try to prevent any harms done to you both mentally and physically. It will protect you from privacy-invaders and it will protect you from harassment.

Networks we currently have are trying to show you more and more. That’s one way to make you an addict. Algorithm or not, the way timelines work, even in Mastodon, it’s an endless scroll; specially if you have a lot of following. My favorite social network won’t give you an endless feed, rather it focuses on giving you a feed which makes you aware of how much you’re scrolling or turning pages. This way it ensures that you’re not spending countless hours reading what you won’t even remember 10 minutes later. Of course it’ll also show you funnies or daily stuff happening to your friends but it will also make sure you’re aware of your scrolling.

My favorite social network will give you possibility to limit your interactions. It will hide you from everybody other than what you choose. You will be able to choose whether you want to be public or keep hidden for outside circles. It won’t make you public or show your existence to anyone other than who you choose. You may choose to be discoverable or not, but whatever you choose it will respect it.

My favorite social network won’t be owned by any corporation or a billionaire, it won’t be forced to implement anything because a player in network or a donor requires it, it will only implement what benefits the members of the network.

Of course not all social networks have all of these issues but they all have at least some of these problems. Sadly, there’s no social network, to my knowledge, that fixes all of these problems. And social networks create communities and not all communities are toxic for me. Federated social networks managed to create a network of communities. For example, in Mastodon, we have Fosstodon that is a FOSS community and we have SDF which is an art community all connected together.

And not all members of social networks actually care about my issues or even care about mind-games social networks play, but most people, I believe, have this kind of mindset and it has become the nature of participation in social networks. We should change that.

I’m super tired right now. Since I started my experiment, I’ve been trying very hard to keep up with it and it’s been 15 days since I started not sleeping well intentionally. 15 very hard days indeed.

At first I thought it becomes easy when I go with the experiment a few days. i thought it’s hard at first and I get used to it but as I was moving forward, it became harder and harder. I’ve become exhausted more and more and I tried to get energy with food and sleeping in quiet rooms to make up for it but it wasn’t working.

I tried to save my energy with limiting my movement and avoid hard work and drinking a lot of water for hydration but it also wasn’t enough.

More I went on with the experiment, more I got distracted and I became less and less focused. It was hurting my job and I couldn’t keep up with everything that was going on. After the first week, to better my work quality and prevent damages to my business, I changed the schedule to bring sleeping hours closer together but it wasn’t enough.

Sometimes I would suddenly come to my senses and realize that I had not been conscious for the previous minutes. But in the same moments that I was doing something, I was aware that I was doing it. I didn’t pass out, I just phased out for some minutes. Something like a muscle memory, you’re aware that you’re doing something but you do it automatically and without your control. For example, I did sell the products and did log the record on my computer but I did them unaware of myself. It was like looking at myself in third-person.

I didn’t have any problem driving or eating. Nothing was changed and I didn’t phase out or sleepy. I didn’t notice any change and nobody told me anything so I guess even if there were some change or inconveniences, it wasn’t that much for people to notice.

Communicating with other people was also good. Only a few people told me I look tired and I could keep up with people and conversations. I also faced no issue with remembering stuff. I thought my short-term memory would be affected but I faced no problem.

Sleeping became hard at some point. I had trouble going to sleep a few times but it wasn’t too much of trouble. I think it was the fifth day of the experiment. Waking up was also hard. It was the hardest part of the experiment. i thought about giving up a few times.

I could still go on with the experiment. I still have some energy left in me, enough to continue the experiment for at least another week but I stopped because I didn’t want to bother my business or people around me anymore. Sleeping hours and crankiness didn’t only affect me, it also affected those around me.

Anyway, I’m gonna sleep like a baby tonight and I’m gonna enjoy every second of it. It was a good experiment and I’m not regretting it. I enjoyed it overall.

It’s been days since I had a good sleep. I’m going to bed late and wake up early these days. I get no more than 5 hours of sleep a day and it made me exhausted, until it didn’t!

Since three days ago, it’s been hard for me to wake up because I feel very tired but then when I get ready and go to work, I no longer feel the tiredness. It made me thinking about how sleeping and resting works so I’m gonna start an experiment.

Starting tonight I’m gonna manage my sleep. I’m gonna add to the number of times I’m gonna sleep in 24 hours but in each session, I’m gonna sleep no more or less than 2 hours. I’m gonna have 4 sleep sessions during day and night so I’ll get eight hours of sleep in every 24 hours.

The sleep schedule will be two hours from 1 to 3, Two hours from 6 to 8, Two hours from 14 to 16, and two hours from 20 to 22. Since the two hours from 20 to 22 I’ll be at work, I’m gonna liquidize the schedule and adopt changes if necessary. My partner will take over when I have to sleep during work hours so the business won’t get hurt.

I’m not gonna achieve anything from this experiment, I’m just curious to see what happens if instead of eight hours straight, we sleep for two hours, four times a day.

I have always said that one of the benefits of having an open mind is that one’s thoughts and opinions will eventually change. There is no shame at all in changing personal views and beliefs over newly presented evidence. This means that one who grows up and is willing to learn and understand will eventually find a totally new person, one who is quite different from the past.

I’d like to think of myself as an open-minded accepting person and I totally believe that I’m growing up. This is because I find myself enthused in new things every day. I see I’m caring about different things and matters and I try to be much better than what I was yesterday.

One thing that hasn’t changed lately about me is that I’m now caring more and more about details. This started when I was active on Mastodon. I refused to publish or share/boost any media that didn’t have meta text and explanation. I truly believed (and still believe) that meta text is much important as it enables people with disabilities to enjoy the same experience I had. This was and is important to me.

My blog has a lot of media that don’t have proper alt text and I regret that I published them the way I did but I’ve decided to not do that again. Accessibility is important and it’s just one minor detail that I care about now.

You may laugh but it’s these minor details that make me feel I’m growing up and I wholeheartedly believe that it’s these minor details that change the world. One simple act can impact everything quite amazingly.

I’ve recently deleted my Mastodon account. Mastodon was my only social network and I was using it since 2016 since it was first started. Mastodon, being a decentralized social network, was not my first presence on social networks. I remember when I was on MySpace, FriendFeed, Vine, Mastodon, Facebook, and Twitter. Sadly some of them were build on proprietary software and are data-harvesting corporations. I regret my decision to join them.

Happily, few years ago I got interested in online privacy and studied it and were introduced to the philosophy of software freedom so I started a redemption journey to only be active on human-respecting networks and services. Until like 2016 which I first joined the Free Software Foundation as an associate member and deleted every one of my social network accounts and joined Mastodon for the first time.

Until now it was my only social network being active. Now that I deleted it, I now am absent from every social network. This has been fun. I have deleted my Mastodon account before and took a distance from social networking and I’m doing it again. I hope I don’t join any of them again since they are very tempting.

The no-social-network thing is good for my mental health I believe. I spend less time on my computers and I probably am more productive and focused on real life and real issues. I also find more time and passion to write on my blog rather than writing short notes. It’s a good thing I suppose.

I also love to brag about having no social network at all. People find that interesting that I feel no need or I’m not tempted to socialize using online networks.

Anyway, I’m not on any social network for now and I, currently, hope I don’t get back. At least for any time soon.