An Audience of Me

Years ago, in the early days of Facebook, I posted every day. At the time, it gave the prompt, “[Name] is…” and you would complete the sentence with whatever it is you be ising. I approached the prompt as a sort of word game and rather enjoyed the challenge of making my thoughts grammatically correct.

Then one day, I went on a hike along the bluffs of the Missouri River. I noticed that I had begun narrating my experience as Facebook updates. “Dorothy is hoping no one saw her trip on that rock,” or “Dorothy is looking down on the birds flying below.” At first I was excited to have so many post ideas, but as the day progressed, I became uncomfortable. Why couldn’t I simply be in the moment and enjoy it for myself?

After that, I stopped posting every day. I would occasionally try to be more intentional about posting for the community of it all, but I really don’t like how it takes over my thoughts. I had a similar but less intense experience with Instagram (which, to be honest, is more my style and I regret not joining earlier), but since it’s switched to emphasizing Reels, not posting pictures is easy.

I say all this, while at the same time, I am a person who really enjoys sharing what I notice with other people. I do this on the small scale with personal messages, and I would like to send more. I also see the appeal of making short videos and posts. I have ideas for things to write and create all of the time. But…I don’t like the social media atmosphere. I don’t want to be thinking about how people will respond before I even get started. It’s funny, in many ways, I’m unconcerned about what people think of me. And yet…
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In short, I’m someone who avoids attention, but gets discouraged by lack of acknowledgement. Add in wanting to avoid having posts and sharing take over my mental life, it makes sense that I’m not an active poster. 

I enjoy winter.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I know I could benefit from the discipling of sharing regularly. On a personal level, I’ve been in a dysregulated tumult since mid-December (see previous post). Writing about my progress and setbacks would likely help me gain more stability. It might help others, too, but I’m not in a place where that should be my focus.

On a more universal level, there’s a lot of concerning and confusing things taking place right now. I’m in a unique position of having interacted with many of the conflicting groups. I think a lot about simply telling stories about the things I’ve learned and experienced. This feels heavier and more important than writing about my health. I feel a tension between wanting to do justice to the stories shared while being 100% okay if no one ever hears what I have to say.

To summarize, I am simultaneously holding the understanding that this will benefit me personally, concerns about presentation to an audience, apathy about an audience reaction, and feelings of pointlessness if no one sees it.
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Rather ironic to post all this on a blog that nobody reads. However, a routine posting schedule here is also the best place to start. So future person, how did I do?

via GIPHY