On July 3rd, I decided I was taking a break from social media. I deleted Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat from my iPhone, iPad and removed any links to them in my browser (I didn’t delete my profiles). A full month seemed like a good amount of time to detox from all of these and see what would change in my life without them.

The first couple of days I was certainly fidgety, kept looking down at my phone and not knowing what to do with it. Call people? Nah… I decided I was going to replace a lot of the screen time I had with reading books.

Over the last 9 years, I’ve had a few things in my life that have benefited me both professionally and personally that have all tied back to Flickr.

In 2003, Canon had released the first sub-$1000 digital SLR camera, the Canon EOS 300D aka the EOS Digital Rebel. The 300D paved the way for entry level consumers to get involved with the world of digital SLRs, previously the cheapest option was the Canon 10D, available at $2,000. You could now learn photography with full control over your camera and have instant feedback without burning through rolls of film.

A couple years ago I was sitting at a poker table for my final interview for a sys admin position with . It had been a long day of mentally exhausting questions, and the interview was coming to a close. The person I was interviewing with sat for a moment and pondered his next question for me.

“You’ve got a building across the street with a bunch of data on a server. The building is on fire. You’ve got a connection between the two buildings. What’s the fastest way to get the data over to you before the building burns down?”