The more I stay off social media, the better I see myself and others

Offline Life Musings #2

Apr 24, 2024

OFFLINE BLING is a free newsletter about offline life musings, burnout recovery and personal essays. Thank you so much to those that have become paid subscribers. If you haven't, it would be a lot cooler if you did. If you don't get that movie reference, we had vastly different high school experiences. Thanks for taking the time to read and support my writing.

Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash

I love to share, but at times, I overshared and probably still do sometimes, primarily because I was unaware of how my brain works. I know it now, so it happens less often. My average share may feel like oversharing to those who vault their more arduous experiences and know how to keep a lid on it better than I do.

I show up differently and hold back 70-80% of my thoughts, photos, feelings, and writing, which I used to freely and openly share via Instagram and, before that, Facebook. I've been writing via Instagram for close to a decade. I wasn't a Tumblr gal, and I'm not an influencer, although I've been called that a few too many times. I did not jump to TikTok. The extroversion overload there and the learning curve were not for me. I was already tired of the sound of my voice, so that was a no-go. I don't think there is a name for people like me on the gram; we write honestly about life. People seem to like that, and that's why I have close to 55k followers between my two pages.

This is a picture of me in the first year when I started a writing project with a friend; we turned enemies and back to friends after our dads died within six months of each other. Two wounded women, trying to figure out life, writing together, not knowing how to do conflict: rupture and repair, but we figured it out eventually. We repaired (that took a long while), and we are both better people for it and better writers, too. Hi Shan!

Even though I used to pride myself on being someone who would learn things openly and out loud and share my findings over social media almost daily, some things aren't meant to be shared as you work through them, and yet sometimes, writing and connecting with others through something painful feels like survival, 2020 was that for me, 2024, things are changing, and it's mostly because I refuse to perform on social media, or consent to people talking at me, or demanding things of me. I don't want to make reels or follow the trends. I want to avoid adding to the noise in people's heads. It doesn't feel good or in alignment. I want to be something other than a content creator. I am a writer who needs more depth. I want to write, but not like I used to. At times, social media can feel like a toxic relationship I want out of, or I am trying to change someone to make me feel better. With the recent changes, I think only 2% of those who follow me see my stuff and know there's an actual person, Ange Morris, behind the writing. Like, like, scroll, scroll.

I know something isn't working for me anymore. I'm in a season or an era of keeping more things off social media. If I am writing, I am doing that for no one to see or here, where it feels better and where I don't feel pressured to put out bite-sized content or worry about the lurking Louise types in my life. If they come to my substack, that is an invested effort.

Social media has become a show and tell that never ends—an infomercial. I've grown tired of trying to capture every moment to make it into content. "mining myself "every day for likes or engagement feels odd. I also don't know what end of me is up or down when taking in large amounts of information for hours and hours. It makes me zone out to the point where I feel disconnected. I look up, and I'm in a room duller than the colour blasting at me by interior designers I follow; it desensitizes me to what is good in my life, what is holy and real.

Watching people do cool shit and live out their dreams but not entirely living out my own yet, confuses me with dopamine rushes and into thinking I've done the thing I've just watched. I refuse to watch life go by in that way anymore. I will not waste five hours on my phone and call that a life.

When you're depressed, reaching midlife, you don't fit into your old life and most of your friends anymore, social media can give you false hope that you are finding your way out, or your people or your thing, but sometimes that is also a mirage. Taking inventory of your life, spirit, body and mind, goals and dreams, has nothing to do with your phone strapped to you 24/7, but we've been tricked into faux connections or finding another guru type telling us how to live and be.

At the beginning of my social media foray, after all the heartache I had been through, I found a home in online life, a saver one. I could write, and strangers would connect with me, and that felt better than some of the actual relationships I was in or had just left. I felt like I was building something. That maybe my life is worth something after all, that the wall I was thrown into, the tears spread on the bathroom wall, hiding from your angry boyfriend, that made you feel like nothing at all. Now people are saying you are something online.

That's how it started: a young woman trying to reconnect with herself after being abused and trying to connect with others like her and make sense of her life, which hasn't changed but has taken on many faces, feminist rage musings, social justice education, highlighting shady wellness practices, grief advocacy. I can point you to everything wrong with our world because I had to be vigilant for a time. I have softened with the healing I've done, and I no longer need to fight and rage against what I deem immoral all the time. I am looking for what is good and what is real. I am safe in myself, and in that safety, I can write from the scar. I don't feel the urgency always to fight or beg people to be different because I found a way to live amongst the chaos and the shattering losses. So when someone on social media yells at me, I shake my head because I worked so hard to get that out of my life, so why is social media any different? And why would I act that way to others, too? I am hardwired to write about these experiences, good, bad, and ugly, and I am being more deliberate on how and where my stories are told.

It has been hard for me to let go of what once felt like worthiness, what helped me move forward, a decade of healing, a decade of becoming a better writer, a decade of finding safety in a partner and myself, all these things are mine to hold, to write about, to change the way I do things online because I deserve better than what I have been getting online, another toxic relationship to grapple with, all at my fingertips, a web of reasonable humans, and ones that extract or falsify connection, a transaction of social climbing, a myriad of patterns that I now pick up on, once naive, but been in too long. I see myself more clearly now that I've taken a step back. I see others too.

I'm a nonfiction writer for now. Having most of my readership via social media has been a struggle to leave behind the ways I used to engage there, not to mention having an online presence as an author with a published book. A lot of mixed emotions are happening over here.

It sounds trite to talk about the woes of social media. Still, I know that anyone who has a business, a presence, whatever you want to call it, people who have their business or interests linked to social media, has also been grappling with this. If you aren't in these orbits, what I'm saying doesn't make much sense. These ramblings probably aren't much use to people like that, but here is the takeaway: the more I stay off social media, the happier I've become; I've written more than I have in these past few months than I had this year last year. I am more present with my partner and surroundings. I engage with real people, go to dinners, knit, go to campfires and juice veggies with new friends. I even planted a flower garden this year. I am creating a life that isn't online and doesn't need to become content. There is freedom in knowing that and still being creative in new and different ways.

Currently reading: Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan
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CBC Podcast: Welcome to Paradise, Anna Maria Tremonti has kept her past a secret for over 40 years. As one of Canada's top-respected journalists, she reported from some of the world's most dangerous conflict zones. In her early 20s, she fell in love with a charming man but, behind closed doors, incredibly violent.