Stepping back from social
/Hello my loves,
Eight weeks ago I thumb-flicked out of Instagram, and I haven’t been back since. I’ve given Facebook a miss too, taking an extended break from social media as a whole, and I have no current plans to return. Over the weeks before I stepped away, I’d started to feel a divide between me and the Gram. Every time I thought about posting, I felt a strange energetic snap-back, like some sort of wall had gone up between me and my feed. I just didn’t really want to be there anymore. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be sharing deliciousness with all the amazing humans who’ve shown an interest in my work - exactly the opposite was true. I love interacting with you incredible people, sharing nourishment and love, I just found myself not wanting to do it on social. And so finally, in mid-September, I gave myself permission to take a break.
Let me be clear: this choice for me was scary. I run a business. A business that I love very much, and one that I’ve put a lot into. Over the past few years I’d been indoctrinated to believe that if you have a business, you’ll also have Instagram and Facebook feeds, do what you can to increase your following, and use social as a core way to share your offerings with your customer base. I was afraid of what would happen if I stepped away. Would all the equity I’d worked so hard to build evaporate before my eyes, leaving me right back where I started, with nothing to show for it? The fear was very real. That’s how strongly they’d got me.
But alongside the FOMO, something else was happening. As I started to speak to friends about what I was feeling, many of them voiced the same things. Several had already stepped away from social media, and one incredibly smart lady had never even gone on there in the first place. My courage was bolstered. These were people I respected - erudite, articulate, intelligent friends. If they were no longer on social media, did I really need to be there?
And so, I girded my loins and stepped away. And god it’s been great. I honestly do not miss one single thing about Instagram or Facebook. In fact, I feel free. I hadn’t realised how strongly the subliminal pressure to photograph and share everything I experience, and everything I cook, had wormed its way into my psyche. I also hadn’t realised how much stress it was causing. In my first weeks off Instagram and Facebook, I was horrified at the frequency with which my hand reflexively reached for the phone. Not to scroll through feeds, I’d not been big on that for a long time. It was the photography that had invaded my life, inserting itself into every single lovely thing I made or experienced, and insinuating that those experiences were only valid if they could be captured and shared. It was terrifying.
This all came home to roost on Wednesday, when I arrived early to an appointment in Balmain, and finding myself with some time to kill, took a toddle down to the water. It was an achingly gorgeous day, one of those Sydney Harbour specials where swathes of golden sunlight sparkle and dance on brilliant blue water, watched over by an enormous azure sky. On the edge of this dreamscape, in one of the myriad of little parks that dot the foreshore, someone had planted a rose garden. And that rose garden was in bloom.
Heavy heads of shell-pink, salmon, saffron and burgundy bobbed seductively in the sea breeze, calling me to come hither and breathe their heady scent. And so I did. I literally stopped to smell the roses, ambling slowly round the circular bed they were growing in, lowering my face to each one, and supping on their exquisite perfume. One rose in particular had an incredible scent, rosy of course, but also suffused with an ethereal otherness, bright and citrusy and bewitching. If I could wear that scent as a perfume for the rest of my days, I would. But I can’t: it belongs to the rose, not to me.
As I floated in my cloud of olfactory bliss, a young lady joined me at the rose garden. She walked up to the same rose I’d just been so moved by, whipped out her phone and proceeded to snap it. Once, check the pic, twice, check the pick, then a third shot – it was windy, and I know from experience that flowers in the wind are bloody hard to capture. And then she left, and I was a little bit sad. She’d missed the best part! The rose was pretty, but its scent was what really set it apart. Now, I’m not saying that my way is the right way, and that roses should be smelled and not photographed, and aren’t I clever to get off the Gram, and what a poor young lady to not be aware enough to experience that rose fully. Oh no no no. That young lady was there for a reason, and she gave me a great gift. She showed me a version of me. The version of me who, eight weeks ago, would have done exactly as she did. Seen something beautiful, whipped out my phone, and dutifully recorded it for a later micro-assessment as to its sharing potential. The version of me who has in fact spent the last three and a half years doing just that. The version of me who’s right on the cusp of realising she’s tired of it.
What if our experiences aren’t supposed to be incessantly captured and shared? What if they’re for us? What if that moment in a garden on the edge of the sea was for me, and the girl with the phone, and the lady reading on a bench, and the man working away at his computer at a picnic table (dude, you’re a genius). For us to sup and enjoy and learn from and just live, without this incessant need to record and share it all, then place a filter over how good it really was by judging it against how many people ‘like’ it.
There’s a growing narrative around the horrifying truth about how social media platforms are designed, what they’re doing to keep you hooked, and the havoc they’re wreaking on our emotional wellbeing. I watched the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma about a month after I’d started my Insta-break. I’d actually purposely avoided it, because I wanted to make my own decision, based on my own experience of being on social media vs not being on it, about my usage. But eventually I felt it was time. Watching it drew a big bold underline around the gut feeling I already had – this shit is not good. It is not good at all. I actually only watched about two-thirds of it, went to bed and had nightmares for the rest of the night. Maybe one day I’ll finish it, but for now I’ve seen enough to confirm that my suspicions about these platforms were more than founded.
Now, I may not be done with social for good. I run a business, and it’s quite possible that there may be times when I do return there, if it’s still a relevant platform, to share information about offerings I’ve created, although I do question its validity in terms of information retention.There've been numerous instances in my own usage where I've commented on posts, then been confused when someone replied to them days later, as I didn’t even remember making the comment, let alone what I’d said or what the post was about. However, there's no denying that for now, social media is a channel by which people consume information, and maybe it's one that it will make sense for me to use at points along the way. But for now I’m enormously enjoying my freedom, and I certainly haven’t stopped sharing. I do that here, on this email, every single week. And I absolutely love it. This is the medium that feels good to me, tap-tap-tapping away at my desk each Friday morning, with you all in my heart as I write. And I’m pretty sure I’m not missing out on anything either. You know where I can get all the information I need? The freaking internet. You'd be surprised how informative someone's website can be. Also my emails. That’s how I keep in touch with businesses I resonate with. As for my friends, I talk to them. I connect with them and share with them and hear first-hand accounts of their hilarious, authentic, challenging, glorious lives. And I love it. I’ve lost nothing at all by stepping away from social, and the emotional freedom I’ve gained is priceless.
And so my loves, another social-free weekend awaits, and I’m very excited about this one. This afternoon I'm baking a cake for a treasured friend’s birthday, and this evening I’ll be enjoying a very special meal. The beans that I planted at the end of August are ready to share their first harvest, and tonight I’ll be plucking them, boiling them oh-so-briefly, and blissing out their fresh bean-y crunch. Yup, just me, my beloved and my beans, with nary a phone in sight. Until next week my loves 💛.
Love, Rachel xxx
