Self expression. It creeps up on you, well, it does with me at least.
I loaded up my blog tonight and clicked on to write a new post with no idea what I was going to write.
This means that this blog post could go anywhere at any time because I feel like I may ramble. I’ll try to keep it coherent.
I’ve always struggled to post on social media, well, at the beginning of Facebook I think I found it easier because we didn’t really know what it was or what to do with it. There was less judgement because people were just finding their way. Nowadays I feel like there’s this expectation that every piece of content has to be brilliantly written, well framed, well lit, filter applied perfection. I get that people want to put across an image or life that is so much better than is reality, but to me that just sounds like too much effort.
I guess the itch that it scratches is self expression and creativity. When I look at some people’s instagram accounts I am in awe of how good they look, it’s a work of art, it’s so visually pleasing. When I look at mine it’s seemingly random, boring and dull. It’s well..
Normal.
Now if you’re a business or someone selling a service or product, I get it, branding is important. I’m talking from a personal level, if you haven’t got the artistic flair then our feeds will just look plain average.
But why should we care?
Because lack of social media presence or creativity can easily make us feel inadequate. That we either aren’t having the time of our lives, or that we aren’t creative enough to post about it. We also all crave telling stories and sharing with each other. Social media is the quickest, albeit most disconnected way of doing this.
A part of me doesn’t post on social media much because I don’t want to conform, to give into sharing in that way. I much prefer to see people in person and them NOT know what I’ve been up to so we can have a conversation in person. I remember a few years ago meeting up with someone I hadn’t seen in a long time and we ran out of things to talk about after 5 minutes because they knew everything I’d been up to! Where was the fun in that?!
To be clear, I’m not judging anyone that posts, not at all. I’m saying that I haven’t found the balance or the way that I can use social media that works for me (again why do I care?). There are so many ways to be creative, why should we jump to social media? Because it’s easy, because it’s convenient?
Or is it because we just want to be heard?
Is this why I’m writing this, is this why I opened the blog and clicked “New Post” without knowing what to write…?
Wow, that went deep quickly. I think I need to stop there before I require more counselling.
There you have it, I went full circle, kinda.
I’m curious, am I alone in this? Does anyone else struggle with posting on social media? Have I developed a bit of a complex about it?!?! DO WE ALL JUST WANT TO BE HEARD!
Let me know in the comments 👇🏻
Vegan Steven 