Oh, oops! Did I make the perfect the enemy of the good again?

Well, it’s been a good three months since I abandoned all my social media friends in favor of healthy dopamine responses and face-to-face connections. It is both a strength and a weakness of mine that, if I think something is worth doing, I will gladly leave everybody and everything behind to pursue it. It is a strength because, if the thing is worth pursuing, I’ve gained the Thing. It is a weakness because, whether I was right or wrong, I’ve just left the safety of the herd. Sometimes that is pretty uncomfortable. (Do go read that post if you want to be reminded of the depths of the covid-madness for a moment.)

Even the correct decisions made in anybody’s life will result in some downsides. When I lost a bunch of weight, I also found myself with a lot of new friends, while some of the old ones (certainly not all) didn’t feel as comfortable with me anymore. Homeschooling definitely makes a difference between us and some people we would otherwise be very like. Eating only meat makes social occasions a little less sharing, food-wise. I can make up for that stuff with tact, but it’s always going to make somebody ask, and then we have to talk about it. I got yelled at a lot during the masking nonsense. Following Jesus is so off-putting to a lot of people that they’ll never even give me a chance to say hi.

All of these things have been worth every social cost to me. But opportunity cost is a real thing to be considered. Not being on social media has had a lot of upsides. I am, indeed, paying better attention to the world around me. I’m happier, generally. I’m also feeling my emotions more appropriately–not numbed to things because I’m just on to the next post after something “affects” me, nor overly interested in things that don’t concern me. Since I swore off scrolling, I have written several blog posts I wouldn’t have had the energy to write before. I don’t know whether to apologize for the posts themselves or be proud, but it’s a fact that I have more to write when I’m not yammering on social media. I’ve transcribed some music and practiced drumming a lot more. I think and hope that my Sunday School lessons are far better thought out without the distractions. I’ve dreamed up some new schemes, saved some money not succumbing to ads, and played a few more video games. I’ve done much deeper research into things that interest me, and finished more books. I even have a book idea of my own, but I tremble to think of that too hard just yet.

I’m finding that, indeed, my mind is very much more my own, and more importantly, much more potent, since I left the Facebook and Social Galactic realms.

At the same time, I have traded something both pleasant and beneficial for all of this really marvelous head-space. I’ve lost interaction with people I really do like, who are far enough away from me that our paths don’t cross. I hate to think I’ll never chat with some of the SG folks again. I’ve learned a lot by just randomly saying ignorant things on there and waiting for the smart people to correct me. I follow a lot of Substacks and blogs, and hopefully won’t lose those good words entirely. But I don’t know what’s on everybody else’s mind to the extent that I did, and that’s a little bit sad.

I’ve also lost touch with some family. I have to drive a while to see most of them. The upside, of course, is that I do sometimes get out and do that, because I don’t want people to think I only like them on social media. To my chagrin, I find that I’m the only one who seems to feel the responsibility to keep in touch that way. Getting off social media means lukewarm people are out of my life unless I see enough value in them to pursue them myself and try to make things warmer. If they cared, I imagine they’d use the phone occasionally. I didn’t start calling it Fakebook for nothing. So that’s really another upside.

I still have all my IRL people. I’m grateful that I’ve not become lonely like I thought I might be. In fact, I’m valuing all the more those real people who have reached out in other ways after finding I’m not on the socials anymore. These are the people who really want to know me. Now I know who they are for sure.

Something else I’ve lost, and this is one that’s really bugging me, is the ability to self-promote. The fact is, nobody is going to promote my blog if I don’t promote myself. I have this blog, a book to write, and a fundraiser that’s running out of time, but I have no way to really put them out there myself. I do have long-time readers stopping by, and the occasional social media share is coming in (Thank you, friends!), as well as search engine traffic, but it is just not the same as I could do for myself.

Alas, nobody comments on blogs. That’s fine! I understand that the internet really has changed since the first version of this blog. I used to have a pretty good readership, with good interaction, but I stopped for enough years to lose most of that. The people who are reading now are at least mostly the same people who were reading back then, so I know you know how to find that comment box and say hi! Please do!

Otherwise, I won’t know what you’re thinking, where I missed something, or where to go next with my posts. The conversational kind of blogging I like to do could make a comeback, if you’d just help me out a little bit! Make Get Along Home Great Again! MGAHGA?

So, am I going to push that big “frens” button now and get back on social media? I was just thinking it through, and I really hadn’t decided until just now, but…no.

Maybe not ever, but certainly not yet. My reasons for going back aren’t really sufficient, when I consider the downsides. I’m jealously guarding my mind from distractions right now. Even if I were to set the rules that ought to keep me from getting back into the sorry state that I was in before, I don’t think it would be very long before I started to fail again. Honestly, I didn’t even write blog posts as much, because my thoughts wouldn’t last long enough. So going back wouldn’t even solve the self-promotion problem!

I am a pea-brain, friends. I can’t walk and chew bubblegum at the same time. If you are not similarly handicapped, I would appreciate a share on your own social media pages.

Whether you link to the main page or to a post that you like, or just drop a comment here on this post, I would love to just know that you’re here, that you find anything here worth thinking about. You can even argue with me, if that’s what you want! You can also subscribe to my rss feed, so that it all comes to you when it’s fresh.