It's Not You, It's Me or "You're Not Special, I Ghosted Everyone"

I took a break from social media starting 11/1. I intended to stay off FB and IG until after 1/1/19, and I did. Longer than that, actually. I ventured back onto Facebook a few weeks back, and at first it was fine. The app never went back onto my phone, so it was computer only.

It didn't take long for me to remember why I left in the first place.

There's a lot of vitriol on Facebook these days, and sometimes it comes from unexpected quarters. I unfollowed a lot (and I mean a lot) of people during the 2016 election because I couldn't handle feeling enraged all the time and the unfollowing helped. Fast forward to recently and my generally peaceful feed full of dogs and kids and vacation slides will suddenly vomit up a wildly inaccurate meme about vaccines or politics and I learn something I didn't want to know about a person in my social circle.

A lot is two words, people.

Add to this constant posts about various MLMs, a billion sponsored ads about things I didn't even looks up (WTF, big brother?), and the ever present vaguebooking status updates. (Seriously, what is with this? If you don't want people to know what's wrong, then why post at all? WHY?) I'm just sort of...tired. I used to post quite a bit, everything from stream of consciousness posts to pictures to memes. On occasion it would spark a fun discussion, but mostly I was just screaming into the void and I can do that by myself. 

Or with a friend, whatever.

Instagram used to be fun for me. It's less negative overall than FB, slightly less sponsored content, more pretty pictures of places and funny pictures of dogs. Most of the content I followed was gym or animal related. For a while I used it to track my workouts, because I watched a lot of other people's content and seeing real people working on their goals was inspiring to me.

Then I started thinking about how I looked in the videos. If what I was wearing was flattering. If my veins and cellulite were too much on display or if my belly was hanging out. I started paying attention to how many views a post got. How many likes. In short...it was making me feel like your basic thirsty bitch. I hate the way that feels. 

I am deeply insecure, but I don't want to be thirsty. 

I opened up IG a few days ago because I'd read a dialogue exchange in a book that really struck me and I wanted to post it somewhere. I scrolled for a few minutes and...yeah. I don't need to go back down that rabbit hole. Instagram is also a place I end up comparing myself unfavorably to others. Especially now. I haven't worked out for two weeks because I'm not supposed to use my legs. Watching other people lift is bittersweet. The vein procedure I had has caused me some pain, and I've put on 5# just sitting around doing nothing. I'm very afraid that the procedure didn't work and it will have to be repeated...or worse that I'll ultimately require surgery to fix my legs and groin. I'll try squatting again this week, but it could potentially be a very long road back. I need to focus on that, and less on reps for the 'gram. 

I'm on the fence about Snapchat. I don't use it as much as I did previously, but I have a tendency to vomit a lot of stupid shit into my Story. The funny thing is, I really don't ever watch other people's stories, and I don't know if they watch mine. I'm guessing not, because I'm pretty sure nobody really gives a fuck, and that's probably for the best. It's a speedy text-plus-picture format, and I like that, but otherwise...it's just texts that don't stick. Disappearing ink for the modern age.

As far as the ghosting. I deactivated my FB and IG completely for a few days while I decided what I wanted to do with them. I've arrived at let them be active, but idle. I don't want people to think they've been blocked or unfriended, because it's not about y'all. It's about me.

Social media has it's own gravity.

I'm not dead. We're still friends. I'm just going to be over here hiding in plain sight. K? K.

Just like this.