Being Off Social Media For Two Months Has Been Amazing.
Fuck…I'm so much happier not being on social media..so much less stressed. Like I don’t fucking care…at all. Its ridiculous really. I’m SO much less stressed about DOING ALL THE THINGS. I'm still doing the things and they feel great but not stressed about it…its like there is nothing out there to continue to compare myself to or think that I am and then feeling like shit because I cant ever measure up to what anyone else is doing all at once.
I've gone the entire month of October and most of November not on social media. Instagram is mostly the one I have a problem with. Whatever else is available, I don’t care about. But insta..well..that’s a different story.
I love pictures! I love them. Back when I used tumbler, my feed was pictures only, no words. The interaction on tumblr is limited to reblogs or direct messages. But I loved the endless scroll of a finely curated feed of only the stuff that I liked. Usher in Instagram, following people I know and it was sort of this perfect in between tumblr and facebook. Where it was pictures that I wanted to see with a nice amount of interaction but none of the bullshit drama and endless sea of links. I actually liked facebook when people would just post some random, usually silly thing on their mind and you could respond to it. Then it turned into…whatever the hell it is now and I don’t even know..i don’t even care. Instagram sucks me in so hard. I like it..a lot. But it does this thing to me and I end up not having total control over my time and my headspace…well..I actually do but what is in my feed steers it and not always in directions I want to go.
Me on the toilet. Life is THRILLING!
I had been sort of tapering myself off of insta for a while but it seemed to still rope me in a bit. More so if I was lonely or tired or putting off doing something. Pretty soon I've spent anywhere from fifteen minutes to two hours throughout the day (I track my screen time on my phone) and I've lost the time to do some of the things I really wanted to do. But its okay…I don’t need to come down on myself for needing a little wind down time.
But…that’s the thing…it looks like wind down time and kind of feels like wind down time but actually isn’t. Not for me anyway. What I've noticed in not being on there is that I'm actually less stressed out about…fucking everything.
There is this thing that it does to my brain. I understand while I'm using it that the photos I'm seeing are only a moment in time for the person posting them and may or may not factually reflect what that moment was like. I'm not saying they're all fake. I'm saying that there is much more to the moment that we see, they are often totally out of context. I've tried my best in my posts over the lasts year plus to be fucking real. I show a moment but I write, often in-depth about that moment (or the day or week or month). Or about my life as a whole reflected in that captured moment. Sometimes it's shit, sometimes its good. Usually it’s swirling somewhere in between because that is how life is regularly. But not everyone depicts that. And that’s fine. I have an awareness of that. However another part of my brain does not. This other part of my brain sees the pictures and tells me that all the other people are doing all the things, outside of the mundane. Great! We all get those times. But the reality is that life is pretty fucking mundane. Even if it's awesome and you love your job and your friends and your house and your life. Its still ultimately kinda boring
Now say, I'm following 400 people. Hell…lets just make it 100. Ten percent post daily. Twenty percent post weekly. Forty percent post monthly and the rest maybe post once or twice a year or not at all. That means on a daily basis, I'm seeing the not mundane things several people are doing. Regardless of how much the people I follow post, what I see is that all these people are doing exciting things (or at least making it look like they're doing exciting things). Add a few motivational instas with quotes and inspiring videos say I see 5-10 a day. I can so easily be on instagram for only and hour and feel like I'm the laziest mother fucker I know. (Which, I think we all know, isnt actually true..but I legit will feel that way). And not in a way that I feel bad. Like "Oh, I wish my life was like theirs" or "I need to go somewhere exotic" or whatever. More in a stress way. An "I'm not doing enough" sort of way. My life is fine. I don’t want yours. I really fucking don’t. But this tiny, skewed view in a picture posting app tells me that I should be doing more. Somehow. Someway.
So, when I stop putting the thing in front of me that repeatedly tells me that I should or could be doing more, I "magically" stopped thinking those things. Like..they literally just dropped off the fucking radar. Suddenly, what I was doing was enough and…AND…I WAS FUCKING CONTENT WITH THAT!! I'm going along at my pace and my pace is fucking perfect for me.
I”m traveling somewhere exciting! (and you’re at home doing the same thing you always do..") This is what my brain tells me when I see this type of post (GUILTY!)
Still..not on there..mostly..it's a weird thing though. Because I'm pretty fucking happy to not have this thing that I feel like I have to keep up with. Like…I don’t give a fuck. There are some accounts that I do enjoy seeing (mostly my BJJ academy) but I just like not being on there.
There is this flip side where, since I'm not on there, I'm not connecting with my people in that way…or social media connecting with them. I don’t have this fear that I need to keep up with it or I will lose them cos…I don’t care. That nature of my art is not really one where I need to post on insta for people know when I'm playing a show because most people following me on insta don’t come to my shows. But there is a part of me that thinks they maybe want something from me…not to drop off the map completely?? However, everyone really is wrapped up in their own lives and probably haven’t even noticed that I'm gone. So..there’s that. But I DO actually want to connect with my people but it needs to be in a way that is natural for me. That is authentic. This whole thing about how I need to be doing this type of marketing and outreach and bla bla in order for my people to find me is grating against the entirety of my very existence.
Now…I'm not sure how much that will work with me in this day and age because I do understand the need to be relevant. Although this isn’t exactly relevance I'm talking about…it’s a whole level of "keeping up" that never fucking ends. It is always changing. If you've spent any small but decent amount of time in the internet world with a desire to "get yourself out there" it's fucking ridiculous. Like it feels impossible when you just get it and then it changes. If you don’t have a whole fucking team working for you, its so daunting. And as far as I'm concerned, it's not fun. Now I do like seeing all the data and analyzing it. I find it fascinating and fun but researching key words and all the things I “need” to do FOR EACH PLATFORM just for people to fucking hear me….over it. I’m ready to pay someone else to do it for me. (You interested?? shoot me an email..seriously.)
So this time off has allowed me this space to let that go. Where I don’t actually need to be doing that to make good art, to love what I do and to share it. I'm a get my hands in it kind of person. I would rather just be touring and building connections that way. Cos when I'm face to face with someone, I know they're not robots (not yet anyway..) but then there is the whole art of getting people to come out to your shows and that’s kinda the same thing only in a different way. So…there’s that. Regardless of my feelings of distaste for much of it, I'm still slowly working at it because I'm learning. And it doesn't feel wrong.
All that aside, being off the social medias, I've been doing what feels right. The things that are "tens" so to speak. The "hell yeses" and that has made a huge difference in my overall well being and my enthusiasm for all of it. To be honest though, this thing that is happening is that I'm kind of forgetting about my people…not quite like that but..I'm not keeping up and I honestly don’t think that posting videos of me doing stupid shit with my music along to is really all that exciting.
EXCEPT that when I did a survey, you all said you wanted more music. So perhaps I should just do that. More works in progress? I don’t know…it all seems so boring/monotonous to me. Who wants to watch me run through my scales every time I play the piano to warm up?
Here ya go! Me, practicing the piano.