Logging off and getting on with life!
Life beyond the internet is somewhere out there, and I'm on a mission to find it
I identify as “chronically online” - I know something about everything, and I’m not even sure how. Social media is both a friend and foe. As I close out my summer of play and self-exploration, I’m taking the time to figure out what I want next for myself and my life and I’m not sure if it exists online. Now that the artificial fight-or-flight instincts evoked by my previous 9-5 tech job have tempered, I’ve found myself exploring a new realm of understanding my relationship with the internet.
In the beginning of my conscious uncoupling from my tech job, I took to Instagram more than ever before, posting pictures of myself on boats, with friends, eating food(!!), attempting to prove to my followers myself that I am fun and that I leave the house. But my deep yearning to be in the next phase of my life - one with a stable paycheck, and a sense of routine and accountability made me realize, I need a break. What was any of this really proving? So I deleted the app.
But without a social platform to mindlessly peruse, my fingers became antsy, and like an addict, I needed a substitute outlet; a quick fix. So I found myself leaning into Twitter.
Twitter (no, I won’t be calling it X) is a silly place, where you can find jokes about jokes about jokes that are sure to make you giggle. But also, this app has deep dives on the darkest shit you could ever read about. The ping-ponging of lightness and darkness was nice at first - I enjoyed the range, only to slowly realize that these extreme takes were slowly eroding my brain and my attitude.
So I shifted my sights to Tiktok. And boy was my algorithm freakishly on the nose. How did this tech company know I’m in the middle of an existential crisis? (Frankly, I don’t want to know.) TikTok, one of the most thoughtful listeners in my life, recognized this deep stirring in my soul, a yearning for something else, for a gradient of perspectives that are contrastly different from the binary perspectives that have taken over my life and my media. Amidst the ads for TikTok Shop, the Tate McRae its ok i’m ok dance choreography, and Live streams I will literally never watch, I started to see content with messages about how to feed my creativity. Content about being creative so that you can be creative and create content. Ha! The biggest takeaway from my hours of content consumption? Quit thinking so much - go do!
One social media, replacing the next, and then the next - a person can only handle so much before the need to go do takes over and becomes the new constant.
It’s ironic, but also fated, that social media is what took me to get off social media, and encouraged me to embrace the social instead.
So last night, I logged out of my accounts, put on a bangin playlist, and took my dog on a walk in Williamsburg, eager to find inspiration and connection from being out in the world.
Wide-eyed and bushy tailed, I took the G over to Williamsburg, strutting towards the dog park, ready to let Brownie sniff some dogs and to let myself chit-chat with some other dog owners. But everyone in the park was glued to their screens, or unavailable for comment, their airpods blocking any possibility of something more. I asked someone, “what’s your dogs name?” She begrudgingly hit pause on her screen and took out an earbud. “Max” she said quickly, hastily replacing the pod back to its previous position.
As I looked around the park, EVERYONE was online somehow, even though in the real world we were all in McCarren Park on one of those glorious pre-fall 75 degree days when the sun was shining bright. Reality was ready for the taking! But I was seemingly the only one ready to meet its embrace.
I didn’t find what I was looking for in Williamsburg last night. Frankly, I’m still looking for what it is that I am looking for. But one thing I know, and continue to remind myself of, is that keeping my hopes and dreams to myself is a great way to never achieve them. I can continue scrolling and liking and moping about how nothings happening to me or for me. Or I can find the wherewithal to set out into the world, and look for the things that pique my interest IRL. I can like people, places, and things in person, and double heart ideas with my words. The more I play with the world, and what’s possible, and what I might do with myself and my life, the more I’ll know about myself, and thusly, what’s next.
This is probably not writing best practices, but this word dump was intended to be about something else entirely - Ironically, I was thinking of sharing what’s inspired me on Pinterest lately. But instead I found that that wasn’t what I needed; wasn’t the story I truly wanted to tell.
I’ve stopped myself from doing, creating, living on so many occasions. Because I’m afraid. Afraid of failing. Afraid of looking stupid. Afraid of being wrong.
But who makes the rules? I do. I can. I will. And then i’ll break them.
Passively interacting with my life no longer serves me. And while I might return to social media, I vow to continue to find ways to break out of the online-ness of it all; to take chances, like writing all of these precious thoughts on a substack for the world to see; to talk to strangers, because hey maybe max’s mom could be a new BFF; to let myself live fast and die hard. Maybe I should just move to Vermont?
I couldn’t decide which song lyrics I wanted to end on, but because I’m making shit up as I go along, you get to read all of them!!!
As Hannah Montana, one of my generation’s greatest scholars once said: 🎵 Life's what you make it, So let's make it rock
In 2001, John Mayer was really onto something: “I just found out there's no such thing as the real world, just a lie you got to rise above”
Lastly, what are you doing behind sitting behind that screen? Ciara and Chamillionaire said it best: GET UP!
Drop the playlist!