Last week, I had an assignment for a communications class I've been taking this summer to completely give up using mass media for 48 hours. That meant for two whole days I wasn't allowed to use the internet, watch TV, listen to music, or even read a book.

When I first read the rules of the assignment, needless to say, I wasn't over-the-moon excited about it.

And I'll be honest — I was considering fudging just a little bit), but it actually ended up teaching me something pretty cool about myself.

So during my 48 media-less hours, without being able to do anything I've normally been doing during my time in quarantine -that is, continually refreshing Twitter and binge-watching Arrested Development I found myself focusing basically all of my time on two main activities: practicing music (yay!) and cleaning (not so yay).

The music part wasn't that out of the ordinary for me: since the earliest days of quarantine, I've been practicing playing piano, ukulele, and guitar on a pretty regular basis.

I was definitely glad that my favorite thing to do in the world didn't require the use of any mass media.

Playing music always makes me feel happy, but without the distraction of media, I felt like I was really able to focus on what I was doing, without stopping to check my phone in between every song.

The cleaning, on the other hand, was a bit more inconsistent with my daily routine. During the 48 hours, I tackled projects I had kept in the back of my mind for months, but had never gotten around to.

After the picking up of the sea of clothes covering my bedroom floor, I moved on to my laundry, then sorting through old books, papers, and old memories stuffed onto the shelf at the top of my closet.

And even though cleaning isn't exactly the most exciting task (especially without being able to blast Taylor Swift like I normally do (if God is real, the fact that I finished this assignment the day before folklore came out is all the evidence I need)), I was really happy that I was finally getting around to organizing all of my stuff.

I knew for a fact that it would've been a long while before these projects finally got finished if not for my media hiatus.

And although music and cleaning basically consumed all of my time during the two days, there was one day I did something else that made me happy. For the first time, I set up my hammock in my backyard and went out with no phone, just a journal and my thoughts.

I laid out there for about two hours, surrounded by the wind and the sun and the passing of cars on the road that runs behind my house, and it was really nice to have time where I could solely focus on me.

As I've gotten older, I've grown to have such a huge love for the awesome impact mass media has on society. I mean, books, movies, music — it's all art that is beautiful and meaningful and allows people to connect with one another.

Especially social media: whether I'm watching a Deaf person share a story in ASL on TikTok, learning about the Black Lives Matter movement through reposts on Instagram, or just laughing at jokes from @CaucasianJames on Twitter, I've always been grateful for the way I can use media to relate to and interact with people I never would've met otherwise.

I'm adamant social media is not a brain-melting time suck — it can be a resource, something I wrote more about here.

But in an unexpected 180, during my two days without media, I couldn't help thinking how thankful I was to use the time to connect with myself.

Cleaning and organizing helped me feel more in control of my life and complete tasks that would ultimately benefit my daily life; playing music helped me to cultivate my creativity and improve a skill that's really important to me; and hammocking and journaling helped me to completely center in on myself and my thoughts, not to mention enjoy just being outside.

I use media so often and have been hinged to the fact it's a gift rather than a mind-melter for so long that I forgot how important it is to turn it all off and think about me.

I will forever be grateful that I've grown up in an age where multitudes of content and social connection are right at my fingertips.

However, in those moments when I was fingerpicking my guitar or enjoying the summer breeze in my hammock, I remembered how important it is to grant yourself time away from the distractions of the media.

To remove all outside stimuli and the constant barrage of information and take a moment to look inward and focus completely and deeply on yourself.