Intentionality
[No song to go with today’s post because I couldn’t find one that worked well. I didn’t want to put in a song for the sake of putting in a song.]
When I first started working in the field I had no social media presence outside of Facebook. I honestly didn’t know how big Twitter was back in 2012. Then I went to my first official student affairs conference. It was the 2012 annual national ACUI conference in Boston. I went to a session about Twitter and networking. I left with a newly created Twitter account.
Soon after I created an Instagram account and then later a Snapchat account. I continued to grow my social media presence. Those that follow me know that I posted about almost everything. I integrated much of my personal life into my social media presence. Don’t get me wrong there were still certain pieces I kept private for safety sake but I posted pictures of family events and snapped about them too.
I did this all for a while until recently when I really began to think about what and who I was putting out there with my posts and if it was all really necessary.
I got off Snapchat. It was getting to be too much to be posting stories on Instagram and Snapchat. I got off Facebook. After all the data mining news I decided Facebook wasn’t the space I wanted to be on anymore. Truly, as the years passed I kept my Facebook account in order to like other peoples pictures or to link my Instagram pictures onto it. It wasn’t a space in which I was actually getting and giving that much. Eventually it became a space that caused me much frustration and anxiety post the most recent presidential election.
I took my family and personal pictures off Instagram. My family wasn’t on social media for a reason so why was I posting pictures of them? I decided there were elements of my life that I wanted to keep private and that was ok.
Soon after I took a month hiatus from Instagram and Twitter. It was amazing. For one my phone battery lasted longer than it already does but really the intentionality in not being in the social media space for a bit was what I needed to regroup. And when I was ready to come back everything was right there waiting for me.
When my hiatus was over I came back in a more intentional way. I realized I had been posting about everything and anything. There’s nothing wrong with that but it had become too much for me. My phone was always glued to my hand and the intention I had when I first got on Instagram and Twitter had shifted from sharing moments of my life to sharing all the moments of my life. I wanted and needed to shift again.
These days I take breaks. Somedays I don’t tweet at all. I post only certain pictures on Instagram which share the moments of my life which I wish to share. There’s nothing that’s a big secret in my life but there are people, places, and things that I don’t want to share. Certain moments that are just special to the moment and to be shared with those that are there.
My point is, that we all get to decide how we show up in these spaces and all you really need to do is be authentic. The rest will work itself out. The advice I give myself is to not try and compete with how others show up in these spaces because we are all different and how we wish to show up in these spaces is different. My life is not theirs and vice versa. The more I remember that the more I believe I am showing up exactly how I wish to in these spaces at the present moment. I am being true to myself. Ultimately, what you see is what you get and what you don’t see well, that’s just for me and those closest to me.
[Photo by Omkar Patyane from Pexels]
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