Changing My Mind About Social Media

I'm giving up Facebook at the start of my 40th year. I have been on the site on and off for nearly a decade and a half. I am not sure that this was the best use of my energy even when it was lighting up the reward centers of my brain. This constant surge of like-driven dopamine has made my love of words and reading dull. My passion for music, a simple movement through motions. Great conversation an echo of what was already posted as a status. At the worst, its robbed and continues to rob me of time. I feel like I broke myself. As I barrel towards my fourth decade, time is now the most important thing to me. How, where, and with whom I spend it. What is the return on investment? Ideally, the long term, mid term, and short term outcomes would be joy, joy, and joy, in that order.  Right now, I get bursts of joy but I've come to accept that...

Facebook does not elicit joy. Instagram does not evoke joy. Twitter does not create joy.

I don't care how many likes I get, how many I give, what kind of kindhearted comments are stacked below my photo, or what meme keeps me giggling during a boring workday; all of it pales in comparison to having an actual full-bodied experience with people. The tingle of not only hearing a person laugh in real time but also feeling their laughter reverberate through a room or shake the sofa you are both sharing, wakes up parts of me that bring joy. Looking someone in the eyes when they compliment you connects you to that person in ways that a heart emoji can't.  Hugging someone opens you up in ways that "*huggs*" simply cannot. There is nothing vulnerable about this parallel existence we have in the social media universe. Yes we can and often do overshare but that is in an attempt to capture what this digital world simply cant give us. We waste time seeking an idealized form of what the real world already offers us- intimacy. If I am okay with this Utopian ideal of intimacy by proxy that social media offers me, its not time wasted, I guess. However, I have reached a point where its not enough. It doesn't work for me. It is time wasted in a life that suddenly has no more time to waste.

I am going analog in a digital world. Kinda.

I want to recommit to living a life that shows by means of action rather simply displays. I came of age in the 80s and early 90s. A world of emergent technology- CD players and digital watches. Not only was owning these items seen as the cool thing to do, it also represented a movement toward instant rewards versus putting in effort to get the chosen effect. I no longer had to wait for my song to be played by a DJ or to have it come up in the cue on a cassette tape. I could now select the number and jump straight to it. The joy of listening to a DJ's rotation or creating space to enjoy an artist's entire 16-song offering started to dissipate. We became our own DJs. We curated our own 16-song sets. The joy of the exchange was being lost. Telling time the old fashion way is now something that a lot of kids and adults struggle with; they need the display. Because they cannot process time, the instrument that displays controls them. Not unlike how social media controls us. Its a display of emotion, intimacy, vulnerability rather than the process of truly engaging in it.

And its not just social media. Its the cellphones, the personal portable screens, Inspector Gadget- level watches, doorbells, refrigerators. Its a world of display... a virtual reality usurping our concrete one, completely erasing our incorporeal one. Our gears and pulleys now electrical particles and keystrokes. Our spirits, netherworld ghosts. I know that we've hit an event horizon because when we can't access this virtual existence, we have withdrawals that render us useless. Its another way to escape the fact that we are spirits choosing to move through a physical world, and that these two states of being don't often sync up in a way that makes us comfortable. We hope that by creating a 3rd existence, we can do what God failed to do. For this, we are paying dearly.

I didn't realize how important the ability to feel was to me until I found myself hearing that my cousin had passed and I couldn't feel enough to cry. I knew that I was hurting, but because I'd spent the better half of my adult years displaying emotion rather than wading through it, I couldn't process it. There's been a lot that I have opted not to process and social media has allowed me to skip this very real human experience. When I have faced rejection, I post a picture that I know will get quick likes. When I've been dejected, I have posted funny memes so that I could pull from a universe of laughing emojis. I looked for the world to display instant goodness; the kind that soothed me in the moment, but did not teach me how to like myself or laugh in spite of. It did not sharpen my mind's eye enough to see that goodness is ever present; it just takes some work.

I no longer want to see NeNe Leakes' exaggerated laughter. I want to experience and feel yours in real time.

I get it, we live in a global world that allows me to trade quips with a like-minded individual in Southeast Asia. But not unlike my sight, this connection is spotty and my brain is filling in the spaces. This connection is more of an assumption than it is fact. Sometimes I assume correctly. Many times, I don't, but its easier to lean into this presumptive reality than working to understand and build in one based in fact. I've lost friendships because people preferred this alternate existence in an echo chamber to the messy conflict that comes with real life interactions. I mourn those losses but as with most things as of late, I let it go with grace. Their departures have made space for people who are willing to get messy with me. I even tried online dating only to find that when the veneer of the display was removed that most of the men I met lacked the skills and emotional acuity needed to build and sustain a relationship. I didn't give expected instant gratification. I gave complexity. That's not what we seek any longer.

But that is what I want... complex, rich, interactions.

And for that reason, I am cutting some of the wires that have found their way into my mind and heart. I struggle with disconnecting from Facebook because that means I will literally lose connection with many folks, but to be honest, I question the soundness of these connections if a virtual platform is all that held them together in the first place. I question our commitment to the relationship if we cant make the effort to connect in real life. The hallmark of any kind of relationship is making the choice to keep engaging. To keep trying. To keep showing up. Sometimes I believe that we are more committed to choosing the platform than the people on it. We live for the temporary thrill more so the reward of something more sustainable

I'm not willing to make that trade off any longer. At least not on Facebook. Its been my digital watch, and I need to relearn the art of telling time. I need to let the DJ lean into his art form and share his gift with me. I want to listen to the entire album of life, not just play those tunes that I like because in doing so, I am missing out on magic. Sidenote: all the magic happens on the B-side. Great DJs know this, but most folks are rarely curious enough to flip the vinyl. Let them open you up in ways that the listening to lead single on repeat simply cannot.

I am leaving room to be present and feel. So if suddenly it appears as if I am not present, its because I am out catching a feeling somewhere. Disconnect and join me.

Changing My Mind About Me: 10 Things That I Learned About Myself in 2019

Ahh 2019. While I have seen others slam you for being brutal, I will be the first to laud you for your transparency and honesty. I am leaving this year a much stronger person than when I started. I'd like to be snarky and say that its because I am no longer in Vermont, but no, not quite. There was more to this year than transitioning out of Maplelandia, and each lesson, each event, each movement builds on the other. It was a year of order. Making sense of my intentions. I am not 100% in order, and I know that I will never be. That is not how this thing called life works. Its a lot of organizing and a lot of being able to function in disorganization. But for all of this philosophizing, I did learn a bit about myself this year. Want a list? Well here it goes:

• I am more of a free-spirit than I give myself room to be. This year I saw myself shake off some of the values that I had as a result of my upbringing. The most profound and the one that I am still trying to make sense of is religion and faith. I might've stepped foot in a church maybe once this year. Part of me feels liberated, but a big part of me feels a void. If I don't have this ritual of church-going then what do I have? If I am no longer digesting the body and blood of Christ, then what is feeding me? I don't have the answers as of yet, and oddly, I am not in a rush to figure it out. I might go to hell. I might reemerge as a new being. I might very well become energy in the universe. I don't know. I keep a belief in a higher power. That's all I got at the moment.

• That brings me to my next point: I am suddenly okay with not knowing a lot of stuff. Will this government collapse? Maybe. Are we being ruled by reptilian overloads? Possibly. Does my mom really like me as a person. Ehhh, who knows. Who cares? My existence and how I am moving through the world now takes up 85% of my mental space. The other 15% is for random stuff. I think that I have spent so much time worrying about the world around me, that I owe it to myself to finally wonder about myself for a while. Notice I said "wonder" and not "worry"

• I stopped worrying this year. Well, not completely but not nearly as much as I used to worry. Look, a lot of shit is out of my control. I accept that. I fix and handle what I can, and the rest, I leave it up to God and the adults who are actually supposed to be handling things. Everything is not mine to fix. Every good work is not my work. I learned personal restraint.

• Women are told that we need men to be whole. I tried the dating thing and it confirms what I already knew about myself: I don't. I like male company, but needing it is a bit of a stretch. And please don't insist that I have yet to meet the right guy. I don't believe that there is a singular Mr. Right. I do believe that I am entitled to make a choice to be with someone who I know will be tragically flawed and will get on my fucking nerves. I make that choice a few times a year, but I don't feel compelled to tether myself to someone nonstop. I lose me in ways that I don't like. I compromise too much. I have to suppress a lot of strong energy when I am with men, and its much too debilitating. At the end of the day, I love me more than I will ever love a man. I will always choose me first.

• I moved this year, and part of the reason was that I wanted to prioritize my personal life over my professional. Put work on autopilot and live. Truth is, I am a workhorse, a taskmaster, a sergeant by design. Getting shit done is in my DNA. I can't turn off work. I don't want to. It makes me happy! Conversely, I also discovered that as long as a I have a steady network of friends, a few dates, and some real travel, I'm good. I don't need to throw myself blindly into social settings for the sake of having a decent life. I have a GREAT life. There is no dichotomy here. Just balance.  

• I learned fear a long time ago. Hard stop. It was taught to me, and became my ethos. I let it go. A lot of the shit that scared me is actually easy and/or harmless. If it scares me, I'm gonna do it. If my spirit says "yo... leave that alone", then I will avoid it. There is a profound difference between being scared and being intuitively aware. I'm getting better at distinguishing the two. 

• If you have been following my life's saga since the start of the year, then you know that I walked away from a good job that was all wrong for me. I discovered that I could not, would not, and should not educate or save white people from themselves. I don't dislike white folks. I do hate that white supremacy somehow makes it seems as if it is my responsibility as a Black woman to fix what I have neither created nor benefited from. These strongholds are not mine to tear down. That's emotional labor that, in the name and honor of Sadie L. Wilkerson, I  refuse to do. Period. Dear white folks, do your own work. I'll see you on the other side.

• Here's the big thing... I earned the right to say "fuck you" to anyone who crosses my boundaries, and be unapologetic about it. As a sat on my coach's couch (say that 5 times really quickly), red and puffy eyed from crying, I realized that at best I have a few more decades in this body. For whom am I living while I am here? For 39 years, I've given a great deal of consideration to others, even when it wasn't given in return. Its made me ambivalent about life in general. This year, I stopped being ambivalent and got intentional about what is mine to own, shape, and create. Its mine, and no one else's. People might no like it, but they'll get over it.

• I used to think that I was cool with playing to the background. That it doesn't matter who gets the shine as long as the greater good is served. Now I know that I have been selling myself short. I want what's mine. I work too hard and share too many great insights just to be behind the scenes. I shouldn't feel bad about stepping up and being out front. I am more than confident in my abilities and ideas because I know from where they originate. Bernice King's last words words to me as an employee of hers were" You are a leader. You know that don't you? You are a leader." Those words stay with me, not because she meant them as a compliment, because she didn't, but rather because it was an acknowledgment that my light was too bright for her shadow. That's not my place.

• Lastly, joy... I learned and am learning what sparks joy in my life. Some of it is simple. A lot of it is unconventional and complex. I don't judge it. I just let it all wash over me. I am intentional about seeking it out, but less inclined to hold onto it and try to control it. That's not how I want to expend my energy. Its like dancing: I don't need a routine to move effortlessly to the rhythm. I just move.

...and that's what I am going to keep doing in 2020. Keep moving.

Changing My Mind About Joy

I made a commitment first and foremost to pursue and cultivate joy at every turn in my life during this next decade. Joy isn't always some major event. Rarely is it something that is driven by others; its a inside job. It can well up from a sensory experience, a memory, a moment. Sound or solitude. Its is up to the person, that vessel of Godly energy to determine what brings them joy. I have been making my own personal list and flowers come to mind. So once a week, I buy my cheese grits and fresh flowers on my way into work. It makes my Mondays a bit brighter. I decided to stop waiting for someone to send me flowers the moment that I discovered that I was that someone. Here's to more joy... more flowers and cheese grits!