Photo via Pinterest
Okay, so I know you all love the fashion and I do too, but sometimes we gotta get a little deeper. We gotta get real, we gotta get honest, and we have got to share real perspectives.
So, after reading Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport – a book that pretty much changed my life and my perspective on social media and blogging in general, my desire to scroll and spend time on my phone has decreased significantly. Currently, I am trying to figure out how to implement my new perspective in a space that glorifies the amount of time you spend on their platforms (i.e. the more time you spend interacting and engaging, the more followers and exposure you gain). However, here is the difficulty….to what extent?
And by extent, I am simply referring to how far should one suffer their mental health and ingrained need for deep connections to grow on Instagram and make more money? It is a question I have been asking myself a lot and a lot of the reason why you may have noticed my presence in posting pictures and stories has decreased significantly.
Here was my question to myself: Was I replacing my desire for growth in a platform, over my deeper connections with others.
For example, social media now allows me to congratulate a friend for getting engaged. I can see their engagement photos, they may share on stories some of how it happened, many times you get to see the ring, etc. It is all so great because we are able to be in each others’ lives more than ever…but does that replace (FOR ME), what I would do if social media wasn’t there? Meaning, if I hadn’t seen their engagement on Instagram, would that friend have texted me? And then in return, in order to get the story would she have maybe called me and told me the entire story from beginning to end? Or would we have decided we needed to grab dinner ASAP so that I could hear all of the details down to the last minute? If neither of these situations present themselves, then perhaps that is an appropriate situation, but if either of those situations are true, why would I be sitting on social media and doing that.
As the book points out, connection is different than deep communication and we as humans enjoy connection, but it doesn’t fulfill us the same way deep communication does. It is why many, after scrolling Instagram feel empty and sad. We aren’t getting the face to face and verbal contact our lives need.
Now maybe, this doesn’t apply to you. Maybe you feel happier than ever after your scroll Instagram, and for me, that can occasionally be true, but there are many others times where that isn’t always the case. Many times, I leave feeling empty or jealous or left out and to be honest, I am SO over it.
I haven’t quite figured out how I am going to balance my new-found discovery, which is why my presence is a bit choppy, but one thing I am aware of is that I don’t want to be a surface level friend. I don’t want my connections with the people I love to be through social media. I want to engage and spend time with friends. I want to hear their voices and laugh with them over a glass of wine. The difficulty, however, is that I do want to grow my business as a blogger and consultant.
This is just my own personal experience and I by no means have issues against social media, I just want to take control versus it taking control of me. If this is something you struggle with, as well, I would love to know. Regardless, I highly recommend the book Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. I think that it is something you are going to be seeing more and more and I feel that it is time for me take my life back.
xoxo,
Melissa
