I Didn’t Leave My Room For A Week And This Is What Honestly Happened

In a world full of FOMO and quotes like “grind never stops” I turned it all off.

I get on Facebook about an hour a day, the app tells me. I’m on Instagram nearly 2 hours a day. I build my brand on these apps. I talk to people on them, I network on them, I fantasize my life being as great as their premeditated posts.

I did this on a whim. I didn’t plan to stay in my room for 5 days, it just happened. My mood was very “I’m only going to do what I want to do” and that meant finally being able to do NOTHING.

Not gonna lie, when I made the decision to delete all the apps from my phone I felt the FOMO right away. I feared losing followers and momentum. But none of that happened.

Here’s what did happen:

I Slept

The first day I didn’t do anything but sleep. I never opened the curtains. When I woke up, ate something, watched some Netflix in bed then took some melatonin and went BACK to sleep.

I don’t know if that’s healthy but it felt AMAZING. To not worry about a single thing and just be able to sleep the day away. It’s so hard for me, I feel like I HAVE to be doing something at all times. Making some kind of move or plotting my next move. If the sun is out I feel like I need to be up and out.

There are a million #morningmotivation posts that tell us to keep pushing. Where are the posts that tell us to slow down? #YOLO (you only live once) REALLY gets me because what if that was my last day?! And I just slept it away!

I had to remember, all the other 364 days of the year I was pushing. This is the first and only day I got decent sleep and didn’t feel like I was missing out on the day. As hard as it was, the melatonin gave me no choice but to sleep.

Got shit done

I’d taken off the entire week from work and instead of going to the beach to “get away” and take some nice shots for Instagram, I opted to stay home the whole time.

After my day of rest, I opened the curtains, made some coffee, and started to write. I wrote several blog posts that day. My main struggle with blog posts is finding the time to sit down and write them. I can usually get one done in a week but I wanted to stockpile a few and schedule them in advance.

I wrote seven blogs. Wrote in my journal. Wrote a slew of quotes for upcoming posts. Wrote poetry. I let my creative juices flow without the pressure of having 15 other things to do simultaneously.

I did end up going to a town hall meeting to listen to the community speak to the city of Phoenix about police issues. Something in me wouldn’t let me miss it.

Got really bored

By day four I was tired of myself and my own thoughts. At a certain point, your body craves some kind of routine, some kind of activity.

So I danced. In my room, alone. Yes, drinks were also involved.

I LOVE music. So much that I want to get back to producing some of my own beats (I used to make beats when I was younger…it got away from me). I dug around online and discovered some new music and listened to track after track.

S/O to Lucky Daye, Iman Omari, NF, Snoh Aalegra, Odunsi and Xavier Omar…I’m now obsessed with their music.

I also caught up on the books I’ve been reading and practiced my photography.

Learned about myself

Spending hours a day with yourself and with no social media it’s easy to get bored. PLUS being in Phoenix with 108-degree weather, you can’t do things outside. So I made the best of what I had at home.

I had an at-home spa day. Soaked my feet, did a face mask, took a longer shower, washed my hair. It was #SelfcareSunday in the middle of the week.

It felt nice to do things for myself, outside of what I usually do. We spend the majority of the week doing things for our job, then give ourselves Sunday. The whole 5 days in my room was for myself.

Same place, different feels

When I wake up I open the curtains, meditate, make some coffee, then chill around in my room for a bit before I have to start getting ready for work.

For the most part, my mornings still started the same but I didn’t have to go to work.

It was a super special moment to do all the things I normally do, but not have to get ready for work. It’s hard to explain, but I think we get so into patterns sometimes that when we break them it feels euphoric.

Instead of going to work I cooked a nice breakfast and continued to binge watch Love Island. It felt great, I was in the same space but doing something different.

Lazy AF and didn’t care

I didn’t have a plan going into this, I just decided to stay home and do whatever I wanted to do. In the beginning, I kept putting off a trip to San Diego but by Wed. I threw the plan away and just kept chillin’.

I can see why people would leave town for vacation. Some of the temptations to get back on social media were still there and some of my extracurricular activities needed my assistance. Being out of town gives you a good excuse to be unreachable. I had to use some discipline.

It was a great experience. I would do it again. I felt like I got a head start on things the week I got back onto social media and I learned more things about what I love to do.

I will do them more regularly.