Restless
Added 2020-03-31 21:03:41 +0000 UTCI am restless.
My mind races, trying to cling to something—anything—to take hold of,
when so much feels uncertain.
Obsessive thoughts march through my head like a parade;
loud, overwhelming, impossible to ignore.
These thoughts fill the void with
what I want to do,
who I want to be,
what I need to buy to achieve these things;
—but there is no peace in this place.
Endless longing,
all based in lack.
I know that this the restlessness that occurs in the chrysalis.
The uncomfortable liminality, the moment between more solid states of being.
I haven't been dealing with it well.
I have been spending far too much time on my phone.
Comparing myself,
letting capitalistic programming take over,
feeding the demon of Want.
Of more, more, more.
All the while numbing myself the fuck out.
My mind becomes quieter,
but my soul withers.
My phone has become a sort of pacifier,
and I don't. like. it.
It's my responsibility to find the root cause of the anxiety.
What am I trying to prove?
That I am interesting?
Cool?
Special?
Creative?
Worthy of love?
Of adoration?
When did I forget that that knowledge can come only from within?
I feel like Instagram has literally rewired my brain.
I have only had it for a year, and it's changed...everything.
Whereas I used to do things simply out of pure enjoyment
and soul-resonance,
now there is this weird, extra cognitive layer.
A voice that says,
"Record this.
Take a picture.
Take a video.
Share it to social media."
This voice has woven itself so deftly into my being,
I can hardly discern it from my true self anymore.
It has created a vast chasm within me.
It makes my life feel less real.
Maybe that is why I have felt lightly disassociated for the last year or so.
Are we doing what we are doing because we truly love it,
or because it will look/sound good on social media?
Oyyyye,
I hate to admit that this has become a legitimate internal battle for me
—but it has.
What do y'all do when your relationship with social media starts to feel toxic?
I would love to hear.
Comments
Gorgeous photograph accompanying your raw, honest words!
L.A.
2020-04-07 13:26:32 +0000 UTCI think I've been struggling with this, to various degrees, ever since I first got online. I can't pretend I've got it figured out now. But there are a few things that have helped me. It's a list of hacks more than anything, and it is by no means a prescription. It is just the best way *I* have found to achieve something that looks like balance. YMMV. 1. one of the problems I've had is to do with the endless consumption. Endless scroll was an awful thing to do to us (who came up with that? Tumblr?). They seem to know how much I want to get to the bottom, to get "caught up" (oh, the irony). I tried to fight this on twitter by aggessively pruning my feed, but it seemed for every account I unfollowed, twice as much suggested content would spring up in its place. Consciously letting go of this has helped. 2. taking (1) a step further, I've gone through periods of "write only" mode from time to time, where I'll continue to publish but not consume anyone else's content. Feels a bit obnoxious, but it's what I needed to do at the time. 3. make the apps harder to use. one thing that helped me with twitter was to delete the native app, only use the browser app, and enable 2fa, and always log out when I'm done. Because I had to go through several steps to log in, I found that I quickly adapted to only look at twitter when I really wanted to, and was willing to take several steps to get there. It also gave me time to notice how I felt when I was doing it, and I didn't like it at all. So I've all but deleted my account now - not through policing my self, but by giving myself more time to notice things. 4. something that has helped the dopamine/feedback cycle: switching my phone to grayscale. I don't do this all the time, but I've found that it really does help with diminishing the intensity of the little red notifications. I feel calmer when using my phone. It does however make consuming things like instagram almost impossible, but not an issue if I'm doing (2). Or I'll be in grayscale until I get past the notifications, and then switch to see some beautiful color photographs, then switch back. 5. my mental health improved when I decided that I had to choose just one social media platform. For better or worse it turned out to be instagram. But it disrupted the "constantly flipping back and forth". I've also removed other apps on my phone that have some alternative in the web browser (instagram has no useful alternative, grr). So there's very little to flip to on my phone now. 6. I've enjoyed the natural flows in my productivity. Going through cycles of posting every day, taking a break from posting, noticing that I am still expecting to see the little red notifications, which have dropped off significantly, and finding myself naturally turn my attention to other things, after some time. I currently have a backlog that I'm working through, which can be a nice problem to have, but because I've been posting consistently for a while I am noticing myself on the otherside of that curve. It might be time for me to take a break from posting content. 7. Spend more time outside of coverage. Sadly, there are fewer ways for me to do that right now. Or, if I can't do that, I'll turn my phone off at certain times. My phone always goes off at night, and when I meditate. I'm trying to notice how I feel when the signal drops, and when it comes back again.
mayatideway
2020-04-01 16:30:01 +0000 UTC
