I’m ready to be a mostly non-social-media using person.
I’ll be visiting “feed” social media sites twice a month: once at the end of the month and once on the 15th, plus or minus two days. When I do come online, it’ll be strong immersion – I will spend much of my day there.
Some humility
I broke most of my past commitments to reduce social media time. Probably I will do so again and it will embarrass me. I will write a post groveling. I’m at 60% confidence that I’ll fail within the next year, 85% confidence that I’ll fail in the next 3 years.
(The intention that’s been notably high impact and high staying power is using social media only on a dedicated laptop. I think doing that for 6 months successfully set the stage for being willing to soft-leave.)
Why?
Let’s start with, why go online?
- Finding book recs and project ideas (this doesn’t happen that often but is is unusually impactful, and keeps my rational brain from endorsing quitting the apps)
- Catching up with friends, finding new friends
- Entertaining oblivion when I’m tired or confused
I’ll try to use my online time to focus on the first two: actually downloading linked PDFs, replying to friends, and talking about what I’ve been up to.
Why go offline?
- I have lost intellectual courage. I’m not emotionally strong enough to take harassment directed even at others in stride. I see this harassment every week and my view of the world has become warped. I think of it as a hostile place, too dangerous to think out loud in.
- The sapping effect we all know about, that crowds out the rest of life.
On that second point: what exactly in “the rest of life” do I care enough about to do this?
The big life change that pushed me towards this is, obviously, having a baby. I don’t think I can have a family, create art, and entertain people online. The first will happen no matter what. Shoved by its bulk, the last two are in competition more ferocious than ever before.
Having a baby also led me to read (books) a more. I am a mildly different person when I read a lot of books. I write more fiction. My mental narration is elevated. I think about different things. Interestingly, it doesn’t feel much better to be that person. But it would be a massive betrayal to my values to not choose that route when it is so clearly presented to me.
One of my favorite intrusive questions is
If after death, a deity tells you you didn’t fulfill your life’s purpose that it put you on earth to fulfill, what would that have been?
My top answer is that I’m here to write weird romance novels. Many of the runners up are also about writing or painting.
Here’s what’s painful. Although I used to dream of greatness, I’ll likely never be an amazing painter or writer. On the other hand, I’m an amusing person. Many people online perceive me as funny and thoughtful, accept when I ask to hang out, and invite me to their parties. This means a lot to me. I spent the first nineteen years of my life justifiably unpopular, linguistically cut off from people who shared my interests, and so extendedly lonely I didn’t recognize it as loneliness. I’m addicted to delighting others, to being invited into confidence, to giving and asking for advice, to great conversations. Going offline means giving up the primary vector by which I get those things.
Do I choose creation or connection? Do I choose the me in relation to many others, or the me that emerges in relative isolation when not buffeted by many small, fast forces? Would I rather have a small shot at emitting what is in me – what is great within me – or would I rather be well known and liked?
This was a very difficult question. You might think this an obviously false dichotomy, since being great will let you be known and liked. But my talents and work ethic are not so great as that. I will never make as many friends by being great as I will by being funny and around a lot.
But I still choose my talents.
Having a work ethic is high romance. It practically defines the trait. You are willing to put dogged effort towards a goal to the point of romantic folly.
– mbateman
When I do come online
I intend to post regularly on this website (which doesn’t feel like a social act). When I go online, I’ll cross-post or reiterate what I’ve put here in the past 2 weeks. I expect posting at all for more than 30 minutes will activate the Posting Fugue State, where I start being more spontaneous and unearthing thoughts I didn’t realize wanted to be their own posts.
I want to catch up with people. I understand that the 2 week cadence is bad for friendships and have to accept it. For the most part, I don’t want to catch up in other channels online. I expect to struggle a lot with this. So many exceptions will come up.
And of course I’ll scroll aggressively, with an eye towards harvesting projects, resources, and books for the next two weeks.