One of the tenants of social media is that we are meant to share ourselves. This is true for all of us, but important, no, critical for influencers. You may have noticed, or you may have not, but I have shared less and less outside of my work in the past few years. I am still here, but I have reduced my output to a very minimal footprint.
This is for a few reasons. Firstly the internet became less fun, we all began to take it all too seriously, and it became a numbers game. Secondly, the rapid changes in what content we are compelled to make, means it is hard to plan and make enough to cover all bases. Finally, the interest I attract being online can be scary, when it endangers my mental health and threatens my physical safety.
I felt a change coming for a while. Amongst being busier with work I do behind the scenes for the community, and feeling like being online successfully was like trying to evade paying the Dachshund cheese tax - I began to show up less. So a retreat has occurred, where earlier this year I reduced everything to very minimal contact. I began to no longer recognise the person I was online, versus the person I spend all of my time being.
Being unwell the entire time, and eventually having surgery to correct this, only for this to go wrong, and make me come into contact with my mortality created an unavoidable break. Suddenly I was no longer the creator, I was the user, and I began to see the things I was missing in my own content. This rolled straight into June, a pride season like no other, and I was left feeling I could step back into my own fate.
So I began to treat my social media less like a fragile thing requiring meticulous planning, and instead as a tool, I could use to share my own perspective imperfectly. I am still working this out, but it looks like sharing important things I think you need to see, mixed with some of the tweets I shared on stories, the things I love right now, and my new nails. I want to share my world with you, on my own terms, and so far this project has yielded positive results - I am enjoying being online.
I don’t know what this will look like for the future, I don’t want to plan too far ahead, and there will be periods when I am here less. For now, I am enjoying dipping my toes back into more of me on the internet - on my own terms.
