Media Binge and Fast Experience

  Starting with the media binge, I started off a bit confused on what I would essentially do.  I'm already on my phone and computer most of the time, so I figured the binge would make me pump up the pace.  So, I doubled the amount of time I was on my phone and you could say it was glued to me.  My experience with the binge didn't make an impact on changing my life or made it that different from what I'm use to, but it did effect little aspects that I noticed.  First, I felt the effects of the lcd screens and the backlight when I tried to go to sleep.  Instead of just putting my phone down and sleeping, I had trouble going to bed.  When I had trouble going to bed, I would pull out my phone and suddenly 1 am became 4 am.  I felt tired and my eyes were definitely feeling the effects.  I felt as if being on my phone was kind of a chore that I had to do, instead of for my leisure.  At times, I felt a bit alone because I would see what my fiends were doing and other people on my feed all the time.  I didn't know what I could do besides refreshing all of my social media pages until I was just doing it out of habit.  By the end of the binge, I felt as if I needed to rest my eyes and looked forward to doing the fast.
  I was looking forward to the fast, mainly because I had never done something like it.  What would I do in my free time?  How would I contact people?  How would I look in public without my phone?  These were the questions I had to ask myself because I'm the type of person that goes to their phone in public situations.  During my fast, I caught myself trying to reach in my turned off phone countless times.  I kept reminding myself that I was doing the fast and that essentially made me stop reaching in my bag.  But, without my phone I had more ability to actually see my surroundings and how many people were on their phones while walking or not.  At times, it was awkward because I didn't know what to look at.  I felt as if I had to be doing something and not just sitting or walking while looking at other people and things.  I didn't talk to my friends a lot during those three days, mostly because I wasn't able to.  But, I didn't feel as alone or left out as when I did the binge.  So, it was a new experience which made me a bit more self conscious because I wasn't scrolling through Instagram or Facebook to mask that. 
  Overall, the binge and fast had made me realize that I rely on media for so many things, but it gets troublesome at times.  With the binge, it just made me feel like drowned and with the fast, it made me more alert of things.  It is good to find a middle ground with technology and I feel as if I need to try to find that.  I need to find a consistency where I am comfortable at and content and I intend to do so.