Today I was planning to share a blog post about my recent trip to the Bahamas. I just returned from a much needed weekend getaway and the plan was to share insight on what to do at Atlantis in 48 hours or less. I’ve been to the resort so many times that it almost feels like a second home to me and I always have a blast. Sometimes, things don’t go according to plan, and as soon as I got settled on Paradise Island, I knew that the post wasn’t going to happen. I needed to unplug.
The last week has been rocky, to say the least. With the recent murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, as well as the tragedy in Dallas, my social media pages have been full of nothing but bad news. The happy life updates that once crowded my Facebook timeline have been replaced with somber (but very necessary) posts about change (or lack thereof). On top of the string of tragic events, my personal life has also been in a bit of disarray thanks to free agency, a time when un-signed basketball players and their families wait for word on where they’ll be playing in the upcoming season. With everything that’s been going on, I decided that during this trip, I should take a break from screen time and leave my laptop at home. I committed to unplugging and limiting the time that I spent on social media. When I did post, I posted to my personal accounts (mostly snapchat) and gave myself a little break from the blogaverse. Although I had planned to take photographs to accompany the blog post that I was going to write about my trip, I decided that if I was going to unplug completely, I was going to have to give my camera a break too. I didn’t take one blog-worthy photo during the entire trip – not of the resort, not of my dinner plates, not of anything. Now that I’ve returned, I realize that unplugging was just what I needed.
While blogging can be therapeutic, it’s also healthy to unplug every once and a while. Among other things, the recent tragedies have shown me that life is short and things can literally change in the blink of an eye. While I enjoy blogging, I don’t want to spend my entire life behind a computer screen and I don’t want to be so busy taking pictures of my life that I’m not actually living it. Unplugging for me meant actually being present in every moment of my trip instead of concerning myself with how certain moments would look on my blog or social media pages.
Unplugging does take a little bit of planning, especially if you want to ensure that things run smoothly while you’re away from your devices and that nothing will come up to make you wish you hadn’t left your laptop at home. Here are the steps you should take to ensure that you’re able to have a successful, relaxing, carefree, unplugged vacation:
How to Unplug During Your Vacation
Write and schedule your upcoming blog posts and social media posts so that you don’t have to worry about it while you’re away.
Setup an “I’m on vacation” email auto-response so that anyone that contacts you knows that you’re out of town and will get back to them as soon as you return.
Hire a virtual assistant to help you tie up any lose ends before your trip and to help manage things while you’re away, if necessary.
Log out of your blog related social media pages and, if you lack discipline, have your significant other or a friend change your password. This way, you literally cannot get in while you’re supposed to be unplugged. You can get the new password from them when you get home.
Unplug and enjoy you time away.
Do you unplug during your vacations? If so, what do you do to prepare?
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