Social media (breakup) anniversary
Happy anniversary to me!
It’s been two years.
Two years since the last time I opened up facebook or Instagram to scroll.
(And about two months since I finally deleted the apps, well hidden in a folder, off my phone).
And I don’t miss it at all.
Make no mistake – it was hard early on. I felt like I was missing out on friends’ lives. Or those acquaintances I liked enough to follow but not quite enough to stay personally connected to. I still liked knowing what they were up to in the world!
But I have never missed that junky, hollow feeling after sitting down for 5 minutes to scroll and looking up to see that an hour had gone by. That feeling that I was missing out on important life things (even the ones I was invited to and chose not to attend, let alone the things I wasn’t invited to…). That feeling that everyone but me was blissfully coupled (but then somehow divorced a few months later…). That feeling that I was underperforming people in my field who seemed to be up on every stage and raking in those big-contract clients (and yet simultaneously desperately seeking work and radiating uncertainty offline…).
What was going on?
Oh right. That was never real life. It was simply a vortex that sucked away my time, my energy, my confidence, my peace…all the things we are all so desperately lacking already.
Leaving social media did not solve every problem I encounter. Not by a long shot. But now, I have the energy, the time, the grace, the ease to tackle those problems instead of melting in the face of them and flopping over to doomscroll the pain away…
