My Social Media-less Life

Of all the things I thought I’d be doing in a year’s time from this time last year… blogging wasn’t one of those things.

It’s not that I didn’t like blogging; ever since I was about 16, I’ve had different blogs on different sites. With the introduction of social media in my life, blogging seemed like a moot point, since people could eventually see, up to the second, what I was doing with my life.

I remember when I first got the unction (because with social media, hearing the Lord was a lot harder than it is now) to get off social media. I saw it as a fun thing! Something I would be going back to within a year, because surely the Lord still wanted me to be a light to people, right? And all the people are on social media.

Wrong on all counts.

What I’ve learned over the past year is that the people are NOT on social media… they are right in front of me.

Of course, that was after I had to get over myself and my absolute addiction to the construct that is social media.

I did a lot of “angry/grieving” blogging during that first month. It still goes on now, but now it has a different tone to it. I’m a lot less angry, and I’ve learned that grief is a cycle, and it happens when you lose anything you’ve developed an attachment to.

Even a 20-year-old toy you’ve had and haven’t touched in almost five.

Because of the tone of my blog in that first month and a half, I had someone I know personally tell me they had to unfollow me because they were reading too much into the posts and it was depressing them.

Imagine how I felt!

I never took anything but love away from that sentiment, however, because the person is very close to me and was brave enough to even let me know. Sometimes it’s harder to tell your friends the truth than a total stranger… that’s something else I’ve learned over the past year.

There are pros and cons to every situation, and leaving social media was no exception.

Even now, I still think of pithy statuses… wait, have I said this before? Well, it’s still relevant, so I’ll make it look like I couldn’t just delete the thought. 😛

There are some events I’ve missed out on (and conversations I should have been privy to) because I am not on any form of social media. Thankfully, my two best friends, and my roommate to a lesser degree, let me know about the most important things when they also are paying attention… since the Lord gave me the three least social-media-addicted friends in the world.

It is amusing to me that more people are now starting to catch on that I don’t have social media than ever before. Within the past month I’ve had to tell at least 5 of my friends that I didn’t know about something because I don’t have social media.

One friend last night at church had the best answer: “Oh, blessed are you!”
She’s such a sweet friend and her answers come out of left field yet hit home every time. I really do feel blessed to be outside of the digital world of social media where everything is three steps from fake and I feel like I’m living in a fog.

Seeing people in real life, without any preconceived ideas of what they might be thinking or feeling– whether friend or stranger– is one of the most freeing things about not seeing everyone’s thoughts all the time.

I’ll take the hit of not knowing about a few events or get-togethers (and the inability to be in on semi-important conversations) if that means I get to really see people how God sees them: with love and compassion.