I recently finished my last semester teaching at a community college (at least for the foreseeable future). I usually take the summer off, so I can’t say my life feels drastically different yet. Thus far I’ve rolled right from final grades into a preschool graduation, dance recital, five-year-old mermaid birthday party, planting my garden, and a trip to visit my grandmother in Oklahoma. I’m waiting and longing for a slow-down, sneaking moments to write where I can. The real change will come when my eldest daughter goes to school in the fall and I don’t have to prep my new courses in a flurry while canning lugs of abundant tomatoes from my garden. But my brain is already sliding into the change, both current and upcoming. It’s giving me pause to think a lot about time and priorities and life rhythms. What matters most to me, and how can I shape my life to bring those priorities to the forefront? Underneath it all are questions of “why?” Who am I? And why does what I do matter?

A strange thing happened last week. My last post about perceptions of time was a book review of sorts. After I had finished the post, I went ahead and sent the author an email letting her know I had appreciated her book and had written about it. A day or so later she sent me a brief and kind reply. End of story, I thought. However, a few days later I got a text from a writing friend of mine who had first recommended the book. The text was filled with large swaths of exclamation points and said that my post had been included in this author’s newsletter. What?! The result? For one day the traffic on my website spiked to almost one thousand visitors. There was a flurry of activity and then within another twenty-four hours it had dwindled back down to its normal range of five to thirty-some visitors on average per day. Sometimes a bit more on new post days.

The temporary spike was exhilarating in the moment, but the lapse back to normalcy was harder to take. I only garnered two new subscribers from the process. Or, the better way to view this fact is that I gained two new subscribers I didn’t previously have (welcome both of you)! The experience left me contemplating several things about writing and what I’m trying to do.

Is the point of my writing to be noticed?

I largely left social media over four years ago. When the pandemic hit with everyone’s polarizing views on how cautious or incautious to be, I couldn’t take the psychological noise. It wasn’t helping my already-precarious mental health. So I quit. A couple months later I took a peek to see if I was ready to dip my toe back in. By then, the country was embroiled in race riots and everything was even more divisive and accusatory, and I said, “No thanks. Peace out.” Over time I realized I didn’t really miss social media at all. My head was more settled and less anxious without it. So I didn’t go back.

Four years later, I’m blogging again and attempting to approach my writing with renewed vigor and seriousness. One of the first things I thought when I decided to start blogging was, “Oh no. Does this mean I have to get back on social media again?!”

If you are reading this from a link on social media, then you already know the answer to that is yes—in part. But I haven’t really engaged with the threads. It feels like a partially double standard to drop my posts and leave, essentially inferring: “Hey, I think it’s healthier to stay off social media (or at least significantly diminish the use of it), but if you’re on here go ahead and take time to read what I have to say. That’s worthwhile.” Wince. Yet the use of social media to promote my work seems somewhat inevitable. (I don’t even like that word promote. Perhaps share might be better?)

Here’s what I’ve noticed since I’ve started getting on and off briefly to post my work:

• I’m much more prone to let my mind wander back to my posts and wonder if anyone is reading them or liking or commenting on them.
• My ego gets sucked up in this popularity addictive cycle.
• I feel (and am mostly resisting, but it’s more work) the tug to log back on more frequently to see if my work is gaining any traffic.
• I question my boundaries of not staying on longer and engaging with other people in the feeds. If I did so, would that generate more traffic to my writing? I don’t understand how those diabolical algorithms really work.
• I’ve already spent more time than I should being emotionally bothered about posts from people I don’t even know that I’ve glimpsed when nosing around for sixty seconds. Sigh.
• It all raises questions again of significance and why write unless enough people are going to read it.

My thing is writing. Yours is going to be different. Maybe you use social media for your job, or to feel justified in a political stance, or to garner attention when you are depressed or lonely and you just want someone to notice. I think all of us turn to the feeds for some kind of validation. Do I have enough friends or followers? Do I have likes? Do people care about what I have to say? All of this ultimately boils down to the underlying, unspoken question: Do people care about who I am as a person? Do I have worth and value and purpose that matters in the world?

Cultivate Self-Awareness

I would venture that social media can’t answer those all-important questions I just named. It offers the allusion of answering them, but it can’t. I think it leaves each of us feeling woefully empty and disillusioned if we took time to be honest about the experience. I’m not here to burn social media to the ground and tell everyone to get off of it. But I would caution that all of us would benefit from regular check-ins on the effect it has on our well-being. Why am turning to the feeds? Am I bored? Insecure? Looking for worth? Spiraling in comparisons? Venting my anger? Numbing out to avoid something more difficult in my life, or even just a mundane task or a five-minute wait that I don’t want to face?

Then comes the question: each time I do this, am I robbing myself of something better? Something more affirming or wholesome? Peace of mind? Contentment? An opportunity to be more present with myself or someone else? Am I missing a moment of wonder, perhaps to notice the way the sunlight is filtering through the tree canopy above my house?

Would a change in habit bear better fruit in my life? Am I capable of stopping? I mean, really stopping? Or am I fully addicted (like the alcoholic who thinks they could stop drinking but never really does)? You might have to try some sobriety to find out.

Because I’ve deliberately spent time away from social media, I’m tempted to think I’m more immune than most. But what I’ve written here proves that’s not at all true. I’m just as prone as you are to being sucked down the rabbit hole of validation mongering.

The Anti-Dote

So what does make what I—and you—do, meaningful and worthwhile? I think the answer is probably complex, but it can’t be likes on social media. Meaningful work can’t be a popularity contest. And it probably shouldn’t be determined even by whether or not what I say is welcomed or applauded by others. Some meaningful work may have something to do with the mundane things that largely go unnoticed, or the regularity of showing up day after day, year after year, and being faithful to something. Or it may have to do with gracefully saying things that aren’t popular because listening requires taking a self-assessing view of your own internal mechanics. (I guess I’m sorry, but not really sorry, if this post is fitting that category for you.)

I see the anti-dote to the social-media-worthiness-rat-race as potentially being a lot of things:

• Practices in being more fully present and building body awareness. Think meditation, yoga, working out, spiritual practices, etc.
• Spending time in nature.
• Cultivating real-life human relationships that are vulnerable and real and help convince each of us that we are truly loved and delightful and worth being with.
• Intentionally consuming things that will make us grow or bring us delight, such as books or audiobooks, instead of passively being handed whatever the flavor of today’s feed will bring.
• And engaging in meaningful work.

I think I have a lot more ideas brewing about meaningful work. So I’m going to save those thoughts for a follow-up post (and to keep this one from being a marathon length). So for now friend, I would leave you (and myself!) with this litany.

Yes, you are worthy. Yes, you are a delight. Yes, you have a meaningful way of being in the world and of doing work that matters. It might not feel like it, and that too is okay. But I believe that is true for each of us. The invitation to deepen your way of being in the world awaits you.

Resources:

• My previous post about time that was referenced at the beginning of this post: Perceptions of Time
• Books on this topic that come strongly recommended (I can’t personally vouch for them yet because they are on my ever-increasing book list!)
  • Digital Liturgies by Samuel D. James
  • Deep Work or Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport

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