18 Days and Counting (or am I?)

It’s been precisely 18 days since I announced on social media (Instagram and indirectly, Facebook, as I haven’t been posting there in a long time) that I will be taking a break. A month, to be precise, with the intention of weighing in the pros and cons as I went through this digital absenteeism.

I did not expect to miss it much, and truth is, I didn’t. I don’t. At all. In fact, I felt good about it. Lighter too. I still do. A few reflections are in order as I am approaching the month’s end.

I love sharing glimpses of the world as I see it. Like most humans, I felt good when people appreciated the photos I posted, but it did not feed my desire to keep at it. A close friend liking or even commenting on a photo will never come close to the complete and deep joy of having say, a conversation on the phone or over a cup of coffee or going for a hike together and catching up on life and laughing about all those sweet nothings that lighten our hearts when most needed.

I love taking photos, and I will keep doing it. I can share them with close friends and family, and with no concern over whether any algorithm will push my posts to where they become more visible. In the grand scheme of things, that’s the least important thing of all. In fact, let me rephrase that. It’s not important. The number of likes. It’s crazy that we have come to appreciate that but here we are.

For my other Instagram account, the business account, I enjoyed creating various posts about nutrition, physical movement and other (I thought) relevant lifestyle bits that can improve one’s state of health as we get older or as we transition through menopause. I put a lot of time and research into my posts (save for the quick shares), as I do in the blog posts and weekly newsletters and the articles I write. It’s nerdy and it’s fun, which means I will keep at this one as well, because I believe in it. Plus, that’s where the positive feedback, from real people who read my content, makes a big difference: it keeps me wanting to deliver quality information. This includes workshops too, and live classes and working with real people, directly or virtually, but it’s real people.

As for the high currency content on social media (aka reels), I did not enjoy filming them. I could never truly relate to speaking and staring into my phone as if to a live audience. It felt fake and uncomfortable.

Again, not because I did not believe in what I was saying. On the contrary. It was best intentions layered with research evidence-based information and a dose of ‘yes, you can’ and ‘never say never,’ or ‘it’s never to late to do better for yourself’. However. It did not sit right with me.

You see, speaking to a live audience, small or large, does not scare me. I love talking to people and engaging in stimulating conversations. I know public speaking is to some, scarier than death itself, or so they say, which I find hard to believe but hey, to each their own, right?

Now, I have to acknowledge something: there is a lot of valuable information on social media. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there’s so much it’s overwhelming. Anything in large amounts can become deleterious (even water!) and information is no exception. The ‘drinking from the firehose’ metaphor does not describe it anymore though.

And of course, there’s the rest of the content that also comes in drowning volumes. Yes, yes, I love videos of dogs, Monty Python and The Big Lebowski clips, and glimpses of our natural world I will likely never get to see in real life. However. I am alive now, here and there’s much to see and live through. Or miss.

There are over 2 billion monthly users on Instagram (3 billion on Facebook) and that’s nauseating to think, let alone to scroll through even a fraction of that content. If you want to read more about Instagram facts and figures, here’s more. Oh, and 0ver 200 million businesses, which is mind-boggling.

What I find unsettling though, again and again, are the targeted ads, not only from the phone listening to conversations (if you set it to not do that, you can’t post audio content – a reminder that there is no free lunch), but also from the scrolling and pausing over something even without necessarily clicking on it. I find that insidious.

Then, there’s the new kid in town. The mighty and mighty controversial AI. It should not be but based on what the people who worked to make it happen are saying, it’s a wild thing once released. Ideally, we should use it to improve our lives, everybody’s lives that is. Naïve, I know. If only humanity would be able of such beautiful and meaningful restraint. The word nefarious seemed to have been invented to define some of what the future holds.

Maybe, maybe not, some may say. Let’s see the glass half full. It’s an entirely different topic, but in the context of social media… things can get ugly. Again, they do not have to, but humans, all of us really, have noble and awful thoughts co-existing. Just ask Robert Sapolsky, PhD, one of the most brilliant neuroscientists alive today and author or many books, including Behave -The Biology of Humans, of Our Best and Worst. We can choose to pick the noble, good thoughts, empathy-filled and so on. Ideally. And sometimes, we do not. There’s degrees of badness, yes, but you see where I am going with this.

It’s no wonder we often refer to things that are piquing our curiosity but come with risks, as Pandora’s box. An accurate and chilling cautionary tale, if there ever was one that captures so many things happening in the world, any of which are powered and brought into existence (virtual or real) through brilliancy and innovation.

A final point to this post: there is so much out there to experience at a pace that is natural to us. Relationships, time in nature, reading, thinking… Time with our thoughts alone is becoming scarce and some say, for a good reason, because they find it scary to be just with their thoughts. Maybe that’s what we’re slowly trading in, the contemplation of things around us, and our thoughts, some of which can be, admittedly, uncomfortable. But that could be the beginning or rekindling of the relationship with ourselves. A necessary attribute of being in the real world.

There is much to cultivate in that realm, and be inspired by: conversations with real people, books, thought-provoking podcasts, articles, and ultimately the reminder that time is a gift, and one way to honour it is by making the most of it.