20 years ago inside a shitty co-ed ISU dorm tower, lied a knock off Coach purse containing a couple of bent camel lights, a shattered Clinique compact, and a Nokia analog flip phone; the kind with a retractable antenna. The purse was smashed at the bottom of a built in shelving unit, the type of unit where the shit on the bottom gets a special kind of lost. I knew I lost my phone but it just wasn’t worth the effort of trying to find it, especially if that meant unearthing the bottom layer of junk in my dorm closet.
I remember when I found my cell phone after not seeing it for several months. It was a shoulder shrug moment like “oh there it is”. I may as well have found an old bagel. It was a non-event. My roommate and I had a phone in our dorm room anyway, but I honesty didn’t have many calls to make. My Mom raised me to be independent so I was claiming that independence by checking in with no one, ever. Though finding the phone wasn’t a big deal to me at the time, it stands out now because 2 decades later, I’m writing about it. My current cell phone is a barnacle on my body. I feel panicked if I don’t have eyes on it or a mild remembrance of where I set it. I can’t focus on anything else until I make eye contact with my phone. I’m comforted knowing that my barnacle is nearby. Generally when I leave the house, I stop at the end of the driveway and look for my phone because I already feel like I’ve lost it after not holding it in my hand for the 10 seconds it took me to drive the 100 feet. Granted, the 2021 digitized version of a phone has many more offerings than my 2001 model. For example, it has thousands of pictures of my dog, never to be looked at again. It has an interactive calendar that is colored coded with alarms set, that I usually tune out. It has credit card info, apps that keep uninstalling and reinstalling as my storage space allows, it has notifications from InstaCart and other places I’ve shopped that are a constant annoyance. I mean, how could I possibly live without this miraculous device? 🤣
You know what else it has? SOCIAL MEDIA. A couple years ago I stopped looking at Facebook or Instagram first thing in the morning. I decided I didn’t need to start comparing my life to the lives of others at 5:30am, I literally had all day to do that. It’s still really hard not to open the app, “they” consistently send me fake notifications trying to lure me in. I don’t care that a stranger on instagram added to their story for the first time in a while, but they really want me to care. Watch the Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma for more on this.
Social comparison can be so demoralizing. It’s easy to depend on other people’s approval. It’s so tempting to find your validation somewhere outside of your own self. You find yourself depending on follows, likes, and comments to determine your worth without even noticing you are doing it. I’ve found myself waiting for compliments to prove I am doing things right. The trap is set. We’re tangled and we don’t even know it. Until we know. Then it’s up to us to make the changes necessary for our own mental health and well being. For me, that usually means hitting “unfollow” and a social media detox. Detox may be a bit heavy for what I actually do. I don’t completely stop but I monitor my social media intake, you know, through an app on my phone. Yesterday I spent 16 minutes on social media. Just long enough to post a couple pics of my Mom’s clothing that I am trying to sell. Plus 4 extra minutes in which I got sucked in and started having feelings of exclusion, emotions over other’s travels, insecurities about my body, jealously over the ability for some people to nail the perfect angle, and irrational thoughts about my parenting abilities. I’ll see pictures tagged of my Mom and even though I love seeing her beautiful smile, it also really stings. All of that internal drama in FOUR minutes. It’s quite possible that I’m just nuerotic, it’s possible that most people can scroll and not have any feelings come up about how others are living. It’s triggering for me and now that I know that, I am able to control it. Part of that, is controlling what I am putting out there as well. What is my purpose for posting? Wait, do I need a purpose? Should I just not think about it and post away? I used to lie to myself and say that I was posting pics for my family to enjoy. Maybe that’s not a total lie, my kids are pretty cute and their family really loves seeing pics of them. I am Facebook friends with many people who used to be friends with my parents and friends of my grandparents as well. It seems it usually gives some appreciated context to their conversations. {It also causes riffs when they read my foul-mouthed blog}. When I post, I try to be mindful and add in the elements that I always appreciate seeing in other’s posts. Vulnerability, humor, empowerment, motivation, self-deprication with a little bit of a bite. Rawrrr!
I do like posting, I will continue to post but for right now, I’m on a break. The break may last 1 more minute or another month. The hardest part of not being active on social media is not adding to my story. I seriously LOVEEEEE “stories”. I mean, shouldn’t people know that I’ve been doing 100 pushups/day for almost 2 weeks and that I’m taking a David Sedaris Master Class? I love that stories only last 24 hours so it’s not really a commitment. It feels light and fresh, the content is current. I love that there are so many fun gifs, filters, voices, and music layovers. If there were a job that just allowed me to add to my instastory I’d be all in. It’s so fun showing my personality in little snippets. I’d never post a video of myself dancing in the kitchen to Vanilla Ice, but I’ve totally added it to a story. You snooze, you lose bro.
In the meantime I’m trying to remind myself that just because it’s not added to my social media doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. Those of us that lived in a time where every moment wasn’t documented can appreciate that we own our memories whether they pop up on TimeHop or not. Thank God there isn’t any 2002 footage of me in a halter top dancing to Chingy in a grimy, smoke-filled club on Welch Avenue and thank God I experienced 2 decades without a 3″ x 6″ barnacle tucked under my leg.
mpoweredstate 