My Life Detox


At the end of last year I realised I was in a rut. Not a terrible one - I was still generally happy and wearing my trademark self-satisfied smirk - but a rut nonetheless. I felt like I was losing perspective in a whole bunch of different areas, and feeling so overwhelmed by the number of different things I wanted to do that I wasn't really getting any of them done. On top of that I also wanted to be done with 2014 as thoroughly as possible. It ended up being a pretty great year, despite the rough patches, but it had very much fulfilled its purpose and I was ready to put it behind me. 

I'd known for a little while that I wanted to take a break from social media to recharge, and decided that my little blackout would also be a most excellent opportunity to get the rest of my life together undisturbed. Like a reverse vacation, where I took a break from everything except working. And it was hella fun.

Note: I've just put a post up on A Version of the Truth about how to go about conducting your own life detox, so fang that a look if you're interested.


First of all, taking a break from making videos freed up a lot of time and meant that I didn't have to stress about thinking of ideas and getting everything filmed and together while I was trying to concentrate on other things. It also gave me a clean break to reassess what I actually wanted to do with my channel without having to keep up whatever I was already doing in the meantime.

As I went into a bit on Sunday, my break from twitter was definitely one of the best things I've done in a while. I love twitter, but when you get to a point where you're mentally trying to condense every part of your day into 140 characters it might be time to take a breather. The first couple of days I genuinely brain-tweeted about almost every vaguely notable thing that happened, but after that it pretty much went away and I was able to resume normal human thought. Praise be.


Being away from social media in general also allowed me to gain back a lot of the perspective that I felt I was losing. By this I mean that there are people who spend a lot of time on the internet, and then there are internet people, and I'm chill with being the first one but I don't really want to cross over. In my mind, internet people are the people whose lives are so heavily based around online content and social media and the specific social circles involved in those that they lose the ability to function in a normal social environment. They live in a little bubble of superficial achievement and don't seem to be able to grasp what is or isn't acceptable in the real world. The vast majority of bloggers and youtubers - even those who do it as a career - are normal, functional people, but I've also come across a lot of people who are so delusional about their own self-importance because of their online presence that I would genuinely pay money to see them put in a room full of people I went to high school with and have to actually interact normally. 

It's actually baffling how people can be so concerned about their subscriber counts but have absolutely no legitimate plans in place for the rest of their lives. Get a back up, son. I'm not about to fall in that cesspit. I obviously have ambitions that relate to online content or I wouldn't be spending my time writing a blog post right now, but they all relate to much bigger, more tangible things I want to do, and tbph I'd prefer the majority of my life to take place outside the computer. 

Luckily for me I'm in a position where I can see my school/uni/normal life friends whenever I want, so during my break especially I made a point of doing that as often as I could. Got the reality slapped right back into me, lads. They're a sassy bunch. For a while there I was slightly concerned that my grasp on normalcy was slipping a bit, but we're back guys. Don't worry. Real world goals and social skills in check.


Finally, after spending New Year's eating every single thing in my very Italian best friend's house I felt like I needed some proper detox action. I'm not particularly into the idea of a full multiple day juice cleanse, because it seems a bit crash-diety and I do not wish to make my body sad and confused, but sometimes I do need a day of pressed juices to snap me out of a baclava-induced state of gluttony before I can get my ass in gear and start eating like a functional human again, so that's what I did. More on that tomorrow, along with a bit of what I did to make my skin stop being a terrible, terrible person.

In addition to buying into gimmicks aka my fav pastime, I also decided to embrace the summer by only wearing makeup when I really wanted to and letting my fro be free. That is right, my children. I was frolicking around all curly and bare-faced like Donny off the Wild Thornberries and it was grand. I'm still very much a GHD and bronzer kind of person, but I've noticed I'm much more chilled about going out to mundane places like the supermarket and the post office without worrying how I look now. I'm not saying go full hippie and start wearing hemp pants like my god brother (Bill ur a free spirit keep doing u), but having a low-maintenence month has made me a lot more okay with my own face. Just sayin'. Plus when I put on makeup now I'm like DAYUM YOU DO YOU. That shit is magic. Moment of silence for makeup.


I'm sure more details of my month of soul searching and personal growth will emerge in posts to come, but at its core the time off just let me disappear for a little bit and reemerge fully as my marginally more grown up self. I feel like I've solidly sorted out my priorities (if you didn't read that in a pre-pubescent Ron Weasley voice you need to get out), and I finally have a clear idea of what I want to do with my life. At least for now. Let's see how this works out.