Welcome to Trippy Monday’s, where I go over 3 things that caught my attention from this past week. Enjoy!
(1) I went on a fishing trip up in Canada last week with my uncle, brother, and cousin, and decided to use this to do a little social media cleanse as well. I landed in Vancouver and immediately deleted the social media apps from my phone. I had to take away all temptation. Throughout the week I noticed myself picking up my phone and swiping to where I’d typically go to check the apps, except now they weren’t there. It was like a ritual for me when I had nothing to do. I felt like I had to do something, so social media was the easy dopamine rush. As the week progresses, I noticed myself doing that less and less. My phone had simply become a phone once again, and I was less and less interested in the digital world devoid of true meaning.
Once I got back from my trip, I was almost dreading re-downloading the apps. I tried putting it off as much as I could, but for me, they feel like a necessary evil. I’m not saying social media is all bad; I genuinely don’t think it is. It is, however, not real. It can be used as an amazing tool for connecting with people and discovering new ideas, but it can also be a soul-crushing monster used to compare yourself to others and doom-scroll the days away.
Just like everything else, social media should be used with intention. This social media cleanse helped me understand, once again, why I use social media and reflect on my relationship with it. I think everyone should do a social media cleanse at least once a year, if not more often, to do the same. I feel better about using the apps with purpose moving forward, and I’ll be trying hard not to get sucked back into the vortex of consuming without purpose.
(2) I brought back about 50 pounds of fish from my trip, a lot of which is king salmon, which is also the tastiest of all the salmons in my humble opinion. The night after I got back, I decided to make some homemade sushi with my prize of flash-frozen fish, and it brought back a lot of feelings of nostalgia.
My mom and I started doing homemade sushi nights together when I was in high school. It was a new experience for both of us, and it was also a way for us to spend some quality time together. We always had a blast creating new rolls and discovering new techniques to bring our sushi-rolling skills to the next level. The last time we ever did it was on Mother’s Day between my freshman and sophomore year of college. That might’ve been the last time I was even home for Mother’s Day.
My mom and I don’t have what I would consider the closest of relationships. I don’t have that close of a relationship with any of my family if I’m being fully honest here, but that’s a story for another day. We don’t have a bad relationship by any means either – it’s just not as close as I see with some of my other friends. I feel bad sometimes because I know my mom would love for me to be home more often and fill her in on what’s going on in my life, but I’m out here doing my own thing, trying to “make it” in the world, and it’s hard for me to do that with people who don’t fully understand what I do and why I do it. It’s tough to balance, and I’ll leave it at that for now. The main point of this is that making sushi again has me feeling nostalgic, and if my mom is reading this I want her to know how much I love her and appreciate everything she’s done for me even if I don’t talk to her and tell her as often as I probably should.
(3) More feelings of nostalgia have come across me since Travis Scott dropped his new album, Utopia, two Fridays ago. I was a HUGE Travis Scott fan when he was first coming up on the rap scene. When he dropped his previous album, Astroworld, I was one of those fans that was looking down on other fans because they didn’t know him before the jump. I felt like I was better than them. I saw him in concert 3 times within a year. I knew every word to every song on almost all of his albums. He was my top artist on Spotify for 4 years in a row. I was obsessed.
Since then, my music taste has gone more towards EDM and indie music, but my love of Travis Scott, and hip hop/rap in general is still there, just not as obvious as it used to be. I knew this album was eventually coming, and I felt indifferent toward it right up until he finally announced the date. I suddenly found myself excited to listen to his music again as I’d been many years ago. It was nostalgic. Nostalgia is a powerful feeling. We crave it. It has a way of taking us back to a specific moment in time when we felt a certain way and maybe times felt simpler. This new album did that for me, and I’m going to enjoy it while it’s here.