Welcome

I read an article today about a woman who stopped using social media. She didn't make a big announcement — no flouncing or dramatic exits. She simply faded away, falling out of her friends' and followers' algorithms. I can relate.

I used social media to update friends and family on my travels; it was easier than remembering to write emails or blog posts. After many years of posting and watching other people's lives progress at a rate seemingly faster than mine, something had to give. It was difficult to remember that people usually post the highlights and rarely the low ones; myself included. All of that, plus the amount of division and shocking personality shifts over the past several years, was making me depressed and anxious.

This gradual fading away came at the risk of falling out of touch with friends. It's harder to keep up with them when you're not active on Facebook or Instagram. It's easier to see what friends are up to when they're all posting to one central platform: a quick scroll and you're caught up. But after you've faded from social feeds, do you still exist? Catching up with the one friend who doesn't use social media takes more time and mental energy, which is in short supply these days. 

With the lack of a central hub for keeping up with friends, text messages and video chatting are my go-to methods. Sometimes I reach out first. I've gotten over the worry of friends not responding as soon as possible; I'm sure I'm not the fastest responder, either. We're all busy, and what good is a friendship if there isn't room for grace? 

With less attachment to social media, I've been trying to be more productive. Not in a corporate sense, but in a way that makes me feel accomplished and balanced and brings me peace and happiness. The extra time has allowed me to explore my interests and passions. I lament that I'm not independently wealthy, not so I can have a private jet, but so I can pursue my hobbies with reckless abandon.

But mostly, I've started writing again.

I took two writing workshops and even though I wasn't able to devote as much time and energy as I intended (life, am I right?), I still found them insightful. They were moderately challenging, but gave me the nudge I needed to work more on my novel. It's huge, clunky, and almost unmanageable, but I'm delighting in re-discovering the story. The workshops gave me a clear path and made me realize that no; I don't need a whole page of my main character puttering around his house. If it's of no service to the story, it's of no service to the reader.

With this extra creative energy, I'm blogging again. I'm excited about exploring my life through this lens. When I was blogging some ten years ago, it was mostly about writing and that pesky "building an author platform." Now, I expect it'll be whatever strikes my fancy, most likely food, and travel. I live in a region of Europe rife with history and nature, and a thriving international food scene that I have written about.

So please, consider this my formal invitation to accompany me as I explore life in long-form instead of 250 characters and 30-second Instagram stories.

Creative oomph