Continuing on this week’s theme of learning to love time alone, I’m going to make a few suggestions about consumption — and I’m not talking about turkey. 

Get yourself out of the mindset that your life needs to look a particular way for you to feel fulfilled. It doesn’t. 

This can be challenging depending on what information you have consumed over the years. You don’t have to buy wholesale what your mother or your faith tradition or, judging from Facebook, half your graduating class says life should look like, and you definitely don’t need to have extra noise coming from all angles via technology.  

Consider unplugging from social media leading up to and on days that may be more stressful because everyone posts their “perfect family” photos and so forth.

This doesn’t just go for Thanksgiving. Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day can be especially toxic for those who have lost parents, lost children, can’t conceive, or have less than ideal relationships with either their parents or offspring.

If you don’t want to be barraged by “family is everything” platitudes, get out of the line of fire. 

Unless you’re someone who is constantly posting things every single day, you don’t even need to announce that you’re logging off for a few days. 

Repeat the phrase “Being alone does not mean being lonely” as many times necessary as it takes for you to undo the socialization that may have caused you to believe it in the first place. 

Skip the kinds of television shows and movies that reinforce that crappy idea that being solo means being sad, even if on any other day of the year you’d focus on the funny parts (looking at you, Bridget Jones, drunk and singing “All By Myself” in your festive jammies). 

Really, if you want to park yourself in front of the boob tube, there are plenty of other options that don’t have the “I’m alone and incomplete” subtext.

More tips for enjoying your own company are on the way Wednesday and Thursday.