I let go of long-loved and loathed platforms in April 2021. Since then, I’ve relished the newfound need and space to spend time with myself.
I am still the same person I was when I had social media.
I am still chaotic, impulsive, passionate, frustrated and bored. But I have less permanent and public ways to express these feelings. That’s helpful because it lets me work through my thoughts and enforces the idea that these emotions are transient. I think there is a perceived permanence of those fleeting reactionary thoughts when posted online. Others seeing it will box you into that category of feeling, even I’ll box myself in the “angry about colourist advertising” category once I’ve voiced my opinion on it online, and I won’t let myself leave. So I’m enjoying keeping those thoughts to myself and questioning, re-questioning, and re-re-questioning what I think in the privacy of my circle.
I still struggle with indecision about my life. Maybe I struggle even more with indecision about my purpose now that I don’t have a label placed on my head about who I am and what I aim to do for this world. That’s what Twitter and Instagram were to me: my personal manifestos of who I was to the world (or something along that line). Since removing those manifestos I’ve struggled with the lack of “purpose” I have. I don’t project my voice to the world, keep my opinions to myself, and don’t have the network I used to (unless it’s via LinkedIn). I have been stung most by having to let all of this go. I’ve missed the agency. So the challenge was to fill my life with purpose in other ways.
Ways that I found agency:
- Started an employee working group at work around equality, diversity and inclusion in our tech space.
- Volunteered for the commonwealth games (danced in the opening and closing ceremonies!)
- Volunteered in the covid vaccination effort.
- Engaged with and even talked in local tech communities!
Missing validation
I missed being seen after a while of no socials. I am figuring out what that is. Maybe I miss the visibility, maybe I miss that spicy validation, maybe I miss the chorus of affirmation I got from my networks. There’s no way to get that unless it’s through LinkedIn or asking my friends. I have to get used to that sensation. What it forces me to ask is: how do I grant myself that validation? How do I see myself? How do I affirm myself?
The answer is still being formed. At the moment, validation looks like thanking myself at the beginning and end of yoga practices for showing up for nothing else except myself, celebrating my wins with my friends, being purposeful about telling them what’s been going on, and logging my wins for myself (I now have a brag document).
What does my life look like at the moment?
Travel is the word of the year for me. I am booked and busy. Life is filling up with plans and efforts to be with the people I love. It’s saying yes to going from place to place, taking on adventures over comfortableness. Changing the pace regularly and constantly listening to my body… or learning to listen. It’s waking up every day knowing I can completely change my life and start over every morning. Or not. It’s learning the balance between finding meaning in life and knowing that we’re on a floating rock in space.
I still have the urge to see what’s going on in the world of celebrity and glamour but I get that information through Google searches and Wikipedia pages. I get information about the people I know through close friends who see them online: engagements, home ownership, holidays, weddings, deaths, and babies all included. It’s cool observing how quickly the world turns. People you last saw two years ago are now having babies out of the blue because I completely missed that they got into a relationship and got married in the time I’ve been offline.
Currently, I still use Pinterest and LinkedIn, they’re my safe socials (easy to let go of and not too glamorous respectively). I now have a very low-key Mastodon account that I am safely unattached to. I use YouTube a fair amount to fill silent lunches and give myself some long-form content that I choose (I use extensions to take out some of the features of YouTube that make it easier to fall into rabbit holes).
Information is received consciously now and that is a massive relief to me.
Next for me…
Time is moving quicker than I’ve ever been used to. Days just run away from me and I have no idea how. I couldn’t tell you exactly what I do with the time I’ve freed up. No, actually I can. I’ve been yoga-ing, going to different cities, napping more, and playing A LOT of chess with the family. Life updates, major and not-so-major, I’ve received from loved ones via text conversations and catchups over coffee. A lot of time has been spent doing nothing too. Doing me. I feel like I am learning to live in the present. It’s a skill I want to conquer better but it’s happening more and more now because I have no choice but to do it. I want to chat with people more, ring people up, and say hi to strangers more.
And I’m working on how to handle the idea of time and ageing. Darkly, it feels to me like we’re all just racing to our elderly lives and I’m trying to figure out how to make the most of what we’ve got right now. Clearing out the feeds has given me the mental space to consider these things.
My goals now are to get back into the habit of meditating, cut out caffeine as much as I can, keep travelling, do some more speaking about tech, and keep beating my grandad at chess. Oh, and to write more… I’ve missed writing nonsense.