I’m still here.
I’ve been maintaining this blog in some form or another since I was 24, prior to the advent of social media, when I had just moved from my hometown of Victoria to London for the first time and didn’t want to spam friends and family with long update emails of my travels. It felt like the need to share my thoughts here waned over the years as I became more and more active on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Goodreads, and whatever other media platforms have come (and sometimes gone) in the past 19 years. However, over the past few of those years, I’ve felt even less compelled to participate in those “social” forms of online existence. Maybe because they aren’t really social; I could pretend that posting my thoughts in a tweet or post or comment to which friends affixed a heart or a thumbs-up emoji somehow constituted connection, and community, but it really didn’t.
In 2016, I did the unthinkable (to myself) and left Facebook - something I swore I would never do because it helped me stay connected to my friends around the world. I couldn’t stand the performative nature of the platform anymore, couldn’t stand the ads, the misinformation, and couldn’t shake the feeling that I was some kind of performing monkey saying cute things for likes. When I announced I was leaving, some people did ask me not to and told me they enjoyed my “content” (which made my presence there feel even more performative). I offered my email, offered letter writing, offered FaceTimes, and these offers were tellingly met with indifference for the most part. I even had a few folks tell me that it was inconvenient for them to engage with me anywhere but Facebook. I stuck to my guns and departed and resolved myself to losing a lot of friends, especially those scattered around the globe.
I didn’t lose those friends from around the world. The real ones stayed. Some may have disappeared at times, as did I, but some found their way back, or I found my way back to them, and I also connected more meaningfully with some people than I had simply through scanning their social media feeds. We TALKED. We wrote emails. We waved at each other awkwardly on Zoom. We met up for coffee after years and years. I mostly lost local friends - who I guess, like me, mistook our ability to scroll each others’ feeds for effort in terms of maintaining the relationship.
Now I find the same thing is happening with Instagram. While I like taking pretty pictures, mostly of my house, or gardens, or interesting things I see on the street, I mostly use Instagram as a curated shopping feed. I hardly ever look at friends’ updates, I have to confess, unless I make a concerted effort to do so - nor do I regularly share something more personal than decor or food photos. Don’t get me wrong - I love my friends and being updated on their lives. I just prefer to do so in person. So again, the social has dropped out of the social media, and become a singular activity for me.
Which got me thinking: if my online presence continues to be ultimately a singular one, where I am most interested in expressing myself (rather than receiving validation or interacting with others), why not go back to where it all started? Go back to the world I created just for myself, where I make the rules, and where I get the most satisfaction because it gives me an outlet to work through thoughts and feelings without a character limit or need for hashtags (#althoughidoloveagoodhashtag). So, no promises, but I am going to make an effort to say more here. To explore more here. It might be more book reviews, because I love reading. It might be journal entries, because I’m thinking a lot about a lot these days. It might be years of nothingness, like the past two and a bit years, because I am out living my life. I don’t know. I just wanted to say - I’m still here. If you are still here, thank you. This site continues to be a record of who I was, who I am, and maybe who I will become. And to me, that is still something to hold onto.