My Week Offline

My magical week offline: knitting, packing, and playing with Jerry.

I can’t remember the last time I went a week without using social media.

Like, no social media at all. Ok, fine, I used Pinterest, but I don’t think that really counts because I use it as a work resource rather than a social platform.

A couple of weeks ago, I hit a breaking point. I looked at myself in the mirror and asked myself, “Why can’t I get anything done?”

The answer was a mix of losing control of my studio in my apartment, leading me into a constant cleaning frenzy, and avoiding all the work I should be doing. BUT, it was also my inability to not get sucked into social media for an exorbitant amount of time when I just meant to check a message. It’s that reflex that we have all developed, almost like patting your pockets for your keys and wallet, that feels out of our control. It’s a gut reaction to any time spent doing nothing, even if it’s just getting a couple of seconds of solitude, that are filled with online nonsense and observing everyone else’s day but your own.

This breaking point came as I was trying to put stuff away in my living room and got sent a reel that led me down a 30-minute scroll. I had a very specific amount of time planned for this task, and it was gone before I finished, all because of this side quest. It started making me think about how much time a day I actually waste doing that exact thing. Even little spurts of 2-minute “scroll sessions” add up to a solid amount of your time that you could be using for quite literally ANYTHING ELSE.

I always felt a strong sense of guilt when wanting to take a break from social media. My mind always jumped to people getting clowned back in the day (lol, it was like 10 years ago) for posting about leaving social media. I never really understood why people would get so bent out of shape for that. Instagram specifically had become almost a contact book for people in your life in the same way Facebook was in the early 2010’s. You disappear on Instagram for too long, and you don’t have everyone in your DMs phone numbers, that’s a whole relationship that’s changing now.

That’s a whole other thing.

Why do I no longer feel it necessary to have people’s numbers?

Maybe that’s just a me thing, because I communicate and surround myself with a lot of fairly online people, but I think everyone has that tendency these days. I catch myself saying, “let’s finally take our friendship out of DMs,” like it’s Tinder or something. It’s something I’ve noticed a lot, and it just deepened my need for a reset.

My unplugged week was from Monday to Sunday, a full 7 days to earn back. I had written out the whole list of everything I wanted to get done in my last essay: making some crafted things, cleaning out my fridge, and going through my closet. The Friday before I was supposed to start this productivity week, I went to go see a studio space I had found very randomly on Craigslist. Studio spaces have become as hard to find as a four-leaf clover. Either they are a hundred-square-foot box with no windows for over $1000, or they are in Long Island City (which is extremely far from where I live) and the perfect space. Forget finding a spot in the city, it’s like having a whole other apartment, if not more.

I saw the place, fell in love, and immediately put in my application when I got home. A part of me was expecting this long, drawn-out waiting period to see if I was accepted and to have a peaceful week of work without distractions. Another part knew it would come in the next 24 hours. A few other people were seeing the spot after me, so it put some fuel in my fire.

Saturday afternoon, while I was walking Jerry at the park, I was accepted, and thus began my week of crafting and packing.

(My actual reaction to being accepted)

The timing of everything was pretty perfect. I now had this whole week unplugged to get my shit together.

In the 2.5 years I’ve been working out of my apartment, I’ve acquired quite a bit more stuff than I had in other spaces. Pounds of donated yarn, random furniture from my building’s recycling areas, material scraps for my spike balls, and just generally A LOT more material hoarding than appropriate.

Fun fact: I have never thrown away a the cones from my yarn ever since I started working with it. Each of these are worth a pound of yarn.

In hopes of killing two birds with one stone, I started using the yarn I had way too much of to make projects. I started with a version of this top I had found on Pinterest.

I’ve made a slightly different version of this silhouette a few times, though not with this ruffling aspect. I’ve been wanting to challenge myself to make ruffles on my machine for a while now, but I just haven’t found anything I wanted to make.

I’m going to make a tutorial on the top once I get settled into my space.

The top was a pretty quick make, maybe half the day, but the crochet edge along the edges has been torturous. Between doing hundreds of tiny single crochets and using a paint roller all day, my hands are getting quite the workout.

The second project I made to destash was a blended scrap mohair sweater. I’ve had all this mohair stashed away for YEARS. I don’t know what it is about mohair that makes me so adverse to using it, but I have only used about 1 ball in my decades of collecting yarn. I’ll make a tutorial of the sweater because, as simple as the design is, it’s SUCH a comfy shape.

Once I finished my projects, I had to start packing up my studio. I filled a duffel bag with every yarn I have ever acquired and held onto like a baby blanket. So many yarns I even forgot I had, getting stashed away again until they settle into their new home, yet again, waiting to be used. Along with packing, I did a lot of planning for my yarn storage. I have never had a proper storage solution that could handle and properly color-organize my collection until now (hopefully).

I did some deep diving on Pinterest to see how other people are setting up their spaces, not just studio spaces, but all spaces. I have a running board that I save:my home set-up dream spaces, and it actually has a lot of attainable ideas that could work with my new layout. I came across this pin that changed everything.

This

is the EXACT situation i need to have all of my yarn accessible AND organized by color. After some research I found that most of these are indeed custom built, rude, but I came across this…

Of course, IKEA makes the exact thing I need. I am getting four of these to create a wall of yarn storage. I am also going to be getting another set of pegboards to continue my wall of cone yarns, which I had already started. I still get giddy just thinking about it.

This is really the only thing I need to get. I am bringing a lot of furniture from my apartment that I had been ready to part with and replacing it with furniture I had squirreled away in storage. It’s perfect. I’m so excited. I feel so grateful to have a space like this.

Along with all of the studio and work stuff, I spent this week connecting with friends and family. Trying to reach out to more of them that wouldn’t usually get the time that social media sucked up. It was really jarring to see how little I usually keep up with people when I get sucked into the algorithm.

Now, I will never get off social media. It’s my job, and it’s actually a lot of fun for me most of the time, but I am going to set some ground rules for this relationship. We got in a big fight, had to take a break, and now we are rebuilding. Some ways I am going to set this up for myself: scheduling free scroll times during the day, blocking out time to post for work, and continuing to use the brick during my actual workday. I want to treat it with the same rigid schedule I try to set up for my studio time; it’s just as much of a time suck, but it’s also just as much a part of my job, so I need to treat it as such.

If you haven’t taken a week offline and actually can, I highly suggest it. It was the perfect reset I needed.

Xx Ella