The Social Media Dilemma Diaries Part 2

I’ve had a Facebook account since 2008, but I’ve had FOMO my entire life. For those of you who don’t know what that means, FOMO stands for “fear of missing out”. And as the youngest of three girls, I worried constantly about missing out on something. I felt like I had to be a part of everything, all the time. Maybe because there was a lot going on. Probably because I was so little and just didn’t know better.

I reference this now because I’ve been off Facebook for a few weeks now and it’s the first time since I’ve had it that I’ve done it for this long. Any time in the past that I took a break, it was usually because of some catastrophic life event. This is not that. This does have me thinking about all the reasons why I haven’t done this yet, and FOMO is one of them. I didn’t want to miss out on things, and I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to tell people about the things I was doing. It’s hard for me to not want to share my happiness. I wonder if for a long time, it was because I didn’t know I was deserving of feeling that joy all to myself. So, I wanted to share when I found a new park or trail that I loved, or a delicious meal I made after putting so much hard work into it. It makes sense why I would want to share these things. For a long time, I think that sharing it, motivated me to do it. When you have depression, you can’t always tell what the difference is between doing the good things and not doing the good things. Or you can’t imagine what that would be like rather. Once you do it, you realize it, but it’s getting yourself to do it that is so difficult. Sharing those things with people made me excited to do the things. It made me excited to exercise and to cook good meals. It made me excited to go to new places and spend time with people.

I feel though, that it’s almost as if we are not sharing it, we worry people don’t know that we are doing it. It’s exciting to share good things, and it can be comforting to share the difficult things, especially when we get so much support. There’s no doubt why we look to social media for so many reasons. It feels good to see ourselves through our friends’s eyes. I like the way you guys see me, and I love the nice things you say to me. But it’s important that I believe these things without that feedback, or validation rather.

There are a lot of wonderful things about social media. It can serve a lot of purposes. It has helped me grow my business. I’m able to keep in touch with friends who have moved away. It even helps me remember birthdays. But how many of us are actually addicted to it? You might be surprised. What was really getting to me was that I was getting on it without meaning to. It became mindless, automatic, habitual. I became curious as to what else I could do with that time and energy. I wondered how else I could be creative, as well as what other ways there were to pass the time.

So far, I’ve used the time off of my social media accounts to work on my website. I have been playing a lot of Tetris on game boy. I made it to level 16 of 20! I’ve been cooking more. My wife and I celebrated 8 years since we started dating. I still make it to the gym for all of my workouts, despite not telling you guys about it. And now, here I am, finally writing again.

I have no doubt I will be back on social media before too long, but it’s been really nice getting back to how life was before it. It’s simpler. We’re not meant to know what’s going on with everyone all the time. I like keeping up with my friends, and I would like for them to want to keep up with me, but in more moderation moving forward. Because too much of a good thing, really is too much.