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Sunday, August 21, 2011

Did I Cheat?

During rehearsal today someone mentioned that they didn't understand how I could claim to be away from social media when I was blogging the entire time and maintaining a presence on Facebook through automatic linking; it seemed that I was cheating on my claims.   Perhaps I was; perhaps I was not.

When I decided to take my social media sabbatical, my main vices at the time were Facebook and Twitter.  I had all but abandoned this blog in favor of sharing the next 140 characters I could think of.  The challenge of being as witty and clever as possible to convey what was going on at the time would consume my thoughts.  Everything became a shareable event; if I was out with my family - share it; when I'd have rehearsals - share it; when a funny thought would pop in head - take a picture of my thinking about it - and share it.  I began doing things for the sake of Twitter and Facebook instead of doing them because I wanted to.  It's like I was chasing the (online) dragon.  No matter how much of sharing I did, it wasn't enough.  And with all of the boolsheet going on at the time (and some of which still is), I was really unhappy with myself.  I would compare my online personas with others and feeling like I wasn't doing enough in my life.  The quest for acceptance still lingers in my heart and head.  I'd get really bummed out and would get angry/sad for long periods of time.  I needed to decompress and get reconnect with myself; therefore, I got off the wheel of despair I set in motion.

So, to me blogging was a cheat as long as I wrote about things I normally had been writing about, and shared my thoughts in a "more than 140 characters" fashion, i.e., be truthful, raw and open.  I've written more in the last couple of weeks than I have in the last 6 months (ok, maybe not, but it feels like I have).  Dumping my life online like this holds me accountable to myself in a lot of regards.  It's cool that people actually have been reading it; that makes me happy because I tend to put up facades in a lot of ways which is difficult for me to do with the blog.  I want to be put in check by others when I get a bit out of line.  I want to put all of my blogs into a book to give to my kids at some point.  Maybe by having a written history of Daddy's most inner thoughts, they'll come to appreciate (or loathe ;-)) me in the future.  I think of it as mental time capsule.

So, did I cheat? I say no. What do you say?

2 comments:

Mary Z said...

The fact that you are able to end your blog post with "What do you guys think?" demonstrates the fact that this is social media. Facebook and Twitter were not the start of social media, though they are currently two of the most popular manifestations of it.

However, if your goal was to abstain from making Facebook and Twitter updates, I would say of course you succeeded. I just don't think you truly abstained from social media. But you did an experiment that ended up making you feel better about life, so what the heck, right?

-Mary Z.

Nelson V said...

1 vote from Mary - yes