So you want to get offline but still live a whimsical life? Let’s discuss

Watercolor paint, pencil crayons, pastels and Joan Didion. (Malachi Lefurgye/AQ)

Each year, people popularize new year's resolutions on social media, from VSCO girls, to “to be cringe is to be free.” Now, 2026’s resolution is to break free from the chains that consumption-driven media has over us all.

Since our frontal lobes are finally reaching maturity, our generation is now becoming aware of the decline and uprise of social media.

We are aware that simply sitting in bed scrolling for hours leads to nothing and essentially a meaningless life. 

We scroll to see others’ lives and live vicariously through them while lying in our unwashed sheets. 

But of course, there are days in which we are not “bed rotting” and instead have a fun night out. Perhaps we are vacationing across Greece and succumb to the pull and need to post it on whatever platform is popular at the time.

But in this new year with Jupiter and Uranus now in retrograde (don't worry, I also don't know what that means but that one girl on TikTok said it was Gemini’s year).

With this new year we are being told by influencers to break the cycle and just cut social media out of our lives.

It’s the new Diet Coke chic.

But how do we actually break that cycle when the influencer telling us to do so is still posting every day?

It's a tough question that I think all of us are asking ourselves. It is even a fault of my own, showcasing a moment of “whimsy” and immediately seeing the likes and who saw it.

That 24-hour dopamine hit of posting an Instagram story, hoping our current eye-contact situationship will see it, is a powerful emotion we all once in our lives crave.

But within this new year, I guess it's easier for me to say “we need to cut posting of a glamorous life out, when we bed rot 85 per cent of the time," since I don't have an eye-contact situationship to see said stories.

I have made Pinterest boards for every “new” year for the past two years. Selecting images to place in a box of all the things that I want to check off throughout the year.

This year I have not. I am allowing the images to find me, saying yes to more outings, saying yes to finding creative outlets, yes to wildflowers, yes to frolicking and yes to life.

So, you want to find things to do instead of bed rotting?

1.    Don't wait for the motivation to hit you at 3 a.m. (you should be in bed). If you have the idea of doing something that isn't on your phone or computer, just do it.

2.       Find a hot glue gun and a stick and make a wand, Harry Potter style.

3.       Read articles and essays on things outside of your typical genre (Substack has a lot of this). For example, did you know that the emission of nitrogen oxides during a single cremation is roughly the same to driving a car almost 3,670 km? No? Neither did I, so start reading.

4.       Stare at the wall or ceiling for 20 minutes in dead silence (unless you have insanely loud upstairs neighbours that make you want to draw blood, then don't).

5.       Pick a wild flower bouquet.

6.       Learn the Gnarly dance (whole song ... that’ll keep you occupied).

7.       Buy a hamster, but actually care for it.

8.       Perfect your “meow,” or “bark,” or even “roar.”

9.       Go to the Unsent Project and write someone a message.

10.  Buy a nice smelling candle and clean your room.

Now, despite all my protests or suggestions that social media is going to be the world's downfall, I don't really believe that.

Going cold turkey on social media won't fix the world's problems, but all I am saying is, maybe take a beat from a screen and find something creative to do. Something that takes time, something you can look at with pride.

Meet people, never stop meeting people. 

Go on awful dates (but for the love of humanity, get off the apps, you know which ones). 

Go and ask someone out just for the fun of it. And when they say no, run away. Feel the rejection, then call your sister and laugh until you cry.

And just like that, go out and seek whatever “whimsical” means to you and create a life that when you're old and withered, you can say, “God, what a life I have lived.”