It’s a blog!

Oh hey there, thanks for checking out my blog! This is the first post of what I hope to be an ongoing project. The purpose of this blog is to share stories about my creative process, post personal essays and poems and such, and generally spend more time on the corner of the internet that I pay for. 

 A major factor in wanting to start a blog is that I’m starting to phase out my social media use. After years of being chronically online, I’m finally making steps to have better control over my focus. I still intend to use facebook and instagram but I’m setting boundaries and in that process, switching up how I communicate and express myself online.  

I’ve been on social media for over half my life. AOL instant messenger became popular when I was in middle school. I remember the day I came home from school and we finally had broadband at my mom’s house. I remember hanging out on fan forums for my favorite musical theater stars. The anticipation of an AIM message distracted me from doing my homework.  I had a MySpace page and a blog all throughout high school. I remember at a summer program my super cool college aged counselor had facebook and said “it’s like myspace for college students. You have to have a college email to join it.” The minute I got my unl.edu address I signed up for facebook. 

Social media, especially Facebook, has been such a core part of my social life. It’s how I keep track of folks from my hometown, college acquaintances, friends from shows, and some folks I met at parties years ago.  I have over 2k facebook followers and for the most part I have made those connections one at a time over the past 18 years. It’s cool to be able to put a number on the amount of people you’ve met and connected with throughout your life but actually trying to process it is not something I think humans are meant to do? There’s that whole concept of the dunbar’s number which is that the human mind can only maintain relationships with about 150 people. Beyond 150 is an audience of casual acquaintances and loose connections. (Here’s a great article about dunbar’s number if you want to go down a rabbit hole). 

Over the past few years, my social media scrolling has become an addiction. Since about 2017 I have tried feedblockers, screen time limits, giving up social media for lent, journaling about it, working thru Cal Newport’s digital minimalism book and doing a 30 day social media detox. I’ve also read countless books on social media addiction, and written several songs about my habits and yet the phubbing around continued. I have finally decided, I just won’t keep facebook, instagram, and youtube on my phone and I deleted my tik tok all together. 

In keeping the social media apps off my phone, I’ve found it a lot easier to focus on whatever I’m working on and also I feel a lot more compelled to get stuff done around the house and pursue different projects and hobbies. I’m finding a lot more balance in keeping track of what’s going on with friends and in the world without overwhelming myself with information. 

Scrolling from the browser mostly neutralizes the addictive qualities of Facebook and Instagram. I still have some moments where I go down a  procrastination rabbit hole but I feel like I have slightly more control. Posting from the browser can be awkward and there are some Instagram features that can only be used in the mobile app. In fact, if someone tags me in a story on instagram it won’t let me reshare the post to stories without re-downloading the app. You can’t post to stories at all from a browser as far as I’ve seen and sometimes I’ll get DMs that I can only see if I re-download the app. So it’s not a perfect system but I’m mostly able to do what I need to do. 

As an artist and a freelancer, making the choice to set this boundary feels a little scary. There’s a bit of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) about it. Throughout my career I have acquired many gigs from scrolling on facebook. I want to still keep an eye out for posts but I think sometimes I conflate mindlessly scrolling with actively looking for work. I want to actively look where I can and otherwise trust my network to tag me in opportunities that are right for me. 

I also want to continue to post and share the things I’m making. Posting on Facebook especially has been a core part of my self expression and I want to continue to share my work and things going on in my life. I also am more aware of what’s a conversation for a social media audience and what is more private. I call these auditorium conversations versus dinner table conversations. That’s a whole other essay. 

So watch this space for updates. At this point my plan is to post blogs on a more regular basis and also send out monthly updates through my Gail Mail list. 

I kept this entry a little short but I definitely have more things I want to unpack about social media and creativity so if that’s something you’re interested in, let me know!

Also here’s some recommended reading if you’re on a journey with your own social media use

For Thousand Weeks- Time Management for Mere Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

Digital Minimalism- Cal Newport

The Shallows: What The Internet is Doing to Our Brains- Nicolas Carr (this book was written in 2011, I need to read more of his stuff)