How do you use social media?
I didn’t think I needed to give up social media.
I never wanted to spend a lot of time on it. And hunting for friends’ posts through endless ads gets old fast.
But then I started an online writing business.
Regular, consistent engagement is the name of the game. So I couldn’t just go in to respond to a couple updates from friends whenever I felt like it.
I now had to show up every day to post something, a meme, a thought, a response. All to keep my blog posts from getting buried in the algorithm.
Because how else are you going to get growth in the online space to prove your concept?
Hidden traps
But throw opportunity posting plus monitoring engagement into an already busy day of working on challenging projects at work plus options trading.
Now I had no attention left for my family when I got home. Things I thought I needed to control weren’t doing very well when I was pouring only scattered attention into them.
Even though large projects from last year given way to smaller daily struggles, my days in early February still felt chaotic.
Maybe a step back couldn’t hurt.
Falling apart
So I got off (mostly) everything.
Goodbye Facebook, LinkedIn, X, Discord, Mighty Networks, and Nextdoor. The only thing I stayed on was Rocket.Chat, where my accountability group gets together.
Because you shouldn’t give up good things that are making you a better person. Sacrifice doesn’t mean cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Sacrifice should have meaning and allow room for you to grow into.
Which begs the question: how to get that growth?
Filling the gap
I chose the Lenten challenge on Hallow following along with The Brothers Karamozov. The team explored what it means for us to belong to each other.
Which included this great example from Peter Kreeft.
He described a watermelon he saw on display in an art exhibit. It was pricked with thousands of golden toothpick-looking objects.
When he blew through them, it made a sound. When he plucked one of them, all the toothpicks vibrated.
One touch rippled across everything touching the watermelon.
Learning process
This was a fitting topic for a social media fast. What started out as a practice of building conversations was now obsessive checking on engagement statistics while looking for opportunities to get people to read my blogs.
Lots of effort, very little growth.
Especially in my meaningful relationships, some dating back to elementary school.
In short, our actions, whether good or bad, ripple out from us into the world.
It could be big accomplishments taking prolonged, focused effort. Or passing people on the street.
How you show up affects how other people around you go about their day.
Suffering in practice
Before the fast, my attention scattered to maintain different things on my own. All things I thought would pluck one needle on the watermelon and leave the rest quivering.
My blog content pitted 160-character one liners against well reasoned posts…
Trades I entered during the market downtrend while worrying how news would affect them…
The lower workload during the dry season at my day job, even though there’s more to plan for…
My wife and kids, who need my attention to relay their problems and try to bond with a dad who’s distracted with defending himself from everything that could go wrong instead of trusting it will all be ok…
Doing it all myself caused a lot of suffering.
Change for good
What does that realization mean in a culture of high achievement, presumed competency, and self-reliance?
I means I need to get better at letting go.
Holding onto everything myself and still getting things done gives the wrong signal. Even worse, it puts insane expectations on me. What people need from me most of the time is to be there.
Surrendering, standing to the side and becoming an instrument, and letting God take care of things has proven more effective.
And I’m more at peace. When I’m more at peace knowing things are taken care of, the people around me are more at peace.
Ripples…
Moving forward
Has that changed how I approached social media? A little.
There’s still an engagement game to be played. But I don’t need to try to keep up with everyone else.
I can create enough ripples doing what I do. And still keep the important people in my life happy.
Peace and truth wins eventually because that’s all that’s left after social media wears everything down.
That’s more worthwhile engagement.
Looks like I needed to give up social media more than I thought.
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