Wonders

I’ve said this before, but I am addicted to Instagram.

I’ve gone on instagram ‘cleanses’ before.

Once for a month. Once for a week. Once for three months.

I always end up going back, though. There’s something about it. Mindless scrolling. Satisfaction… for what? I don’t post anything and I don’t get high off ‘likes’ (because there are no ‘likes’ because I am not posting anything!). I like to see the pages I follow for ‘inspiration’.

Homeschooling ideas, activities for my kids, cleaning inspiration, workout inspiration.

The thing is, though, the people who make this content also post a lot about their personal lives, so you’re subjected to that too.

And it’s just so much of it, so monotonous, so tedious.

Yet I still scroll.

There is a science behind it, why you keep scrolling even though you don’t want to. They’ve researched it thoroughly and have programmed their apps to hit your dopamine right on target.

So anyway. I deleted instagram again for a month, ending 25th August. During that time I read three books, bought and made a start on a planner (very colourful and I thoroughly enjoyed decorating it with stickers and whatnot), went out a lot with my babies, hosted family over for three weeks…

Not to say I wouldn’t have done those things if I had instagram on my phone readily available to me.. I WOULD have still hosted and gone out and read things…

I don’t really know how to describe it to you.

There is a word in arabic and it’s ‘ikti’aab’. It literally means depression. But in your bones. Deep exhaustion.

Not tired.

It’s like the monochrome videos everybody makes now. They’re all doing something with their fists, some kind of weird dance, and words pop up on the screen as they fist pump and wriggle around like worms on camera. It’s the same thing, just done by different people. Eagerly eyeing the like button. Faces filtered beyond recognition.

It felt weird opening instagram again after this hiatus.

It felt like peering into a world of narcissistic aliens, and they all harp on about not being narcissistic and being ‘real’ but their ‘real’ footage is scripted, because they look so perfect and are angling their cameras just so… just so their boobs are looking their best… just so their hair is at the perfect angle… just so their faces are tilted just right….

Being raw and vulnerable …

All the comments… ‘you’re so brave! you’re so strong! you’re so raw! omg!’

And I look out of that fakery into my reality and realise with a painful thump that this curated world I am peering into is an illusion.

I still feel shitty about myself though. My parenting. My ability to school my kids. What I feed them. What they wear. How our house looks.

And so. One of these days. I am deleting social media for good.

Decluttering

Today, when I sat procrastinating doing some Very Important Admin, I was watching some youtube videos of people’s apartments. Most of these apartments were white, pristine, clean, looking as though they were designed expertly for a high end magazine. It looks suspiciously like there was some artful lighting placed invisibly just beyond the camera angles. The plants were brand new, the sofas hadn’t been sat on, there was no clutter at all.

No coffee cups, no newspapers, no books out of place, no pencils and pens, no thoughts lying on open pages, no crumbs evidencing food was consumed, no clothes absently draped over chairs and no thimbles left to roll on a windowsill. Did these Youtubers actually live in these homes? Or did they pay someone to make a set so that they could get some fabulous content?

I know some people like to live as though they were in a magazine, with no clutter at all anywhere. My husband is like this, which is why he hates my books (which I enjoy accumulating because they bring me comfort). He thinks that if I read a book, I ought to give it away as soon as I am done, so as not to make this house more cluttered than it is.

Anyway the point is, it has now become a trend to declutter your home, and live as though you dare not own anything ‘tacky’ or have any personal taste at all.It has to fit an ‘aesthetic’. Currently the trend is large green houseplants, slim lines, a dark green or blue feature wall, plenty of white, and some rustic ruggedness that is also pristine and new. People on social media apologise for their ‘cluttered’ homes, which are just personal spaces filled with things they enjoy having, depicting their personalities and interests.

So if you have clutter, you get judged. Not me, just people who post things and people who comment things.

Now, this is a stale argument in my marriage, but I happen to think that some clutter is a good thing. A little decoration piece that you got 6 years ago on the edge of a river. A post-it note from your classmate who is now traversing distant lands, but which reminds you of times when you couldn’t control your laughter. A tiny gondola made from murano glass with its edge snapped off, but which reminds you of early marriage days and sweet innocent love. It differentiates you from everybody else who has a feature wall and large houseplants.

It also makes you realise who YOU are.

I read a sad thing yesterday, where a lady who runs a youtube channel and an instagram page said, as though everybody else thought the same as her, ‘I regret painting my wall blue to fit an instagram aesthetic. Next time, you should choose a colour and design YOU like, not what instagram likes‘. It seems like a lot of social media orientated people are doing this.

 

Giovanni Paolo Pannini

Real Life Living

It wasn’t a new year’s resolution or anything, because I didn’t do it in the New Year, but I deleted all my social media on the 22nd of December.

So that included Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, Snapchat – all apps I peruse daily when I am procrastinating doing things that are more important. I just like to pick up my phone to see what is going on in the world of humans. Just the daily world, not the news world. You know, what are people eating for lunch, what are they doing with their friends, what they are doing with their families and their dogs and at home alone and which restaurants are they eating at, and oh, what on earth are they doing at the gym?

It’s checking in, really. It feels like connecting, but without the effort of speaking or thinking, just observing other humans silently. I don’t post anything of my own, I just nosy at what my friends and acquaintances and that girl from college back in the day are doing, and my goodness that girl I know has a £1,200 pram, let me judge her while I peruse a cheaper version of the same pram second hand on eBay…

I don’t know why I am so obsessed with social media. There is a hunger for it that can never be satiated, and after I have spent hours (literally, according to the screen time tracker they now have on iPhones) scrolling past endless updates, and swiping across an infinity of instastories and snapchat stories, I feel empty.

Lost.

Emotional.

Weird.

Lonely.

And the more I think about it, the more confused I get.

There seems to be this need, with the current generation, to be constantly present. To be constantly entertained. To be constantly engaged in something. The mind has to be constantly focused on something, but only for a short amount of time. We can’t work for several hours on something without checking our phones for a ‘breather’, and ending up spending hours on our phones, because there is an endless stream of new information to process.

THAT is what it is. Constant distraction.

Constant leaping from one notion to another.

Constant, never-ending, and serving no purpose.

The brain files this into short term memory and then gets rid of it as it has a mountain of new things to digest and take apart.

Anyway. So I deleted everything and my fingers are itching. It’s like I have phantom limb syndrome. You know when they cut off someone’s limb, and that person still feels it itching but can’t itch it because it doesn’t exist?

I feel that way.

I keep picking up my phone and swipe across my home screen, past all the productive apps like Kindle and iBooks and Audible and Podcasts and News, my eyeballs searching for the familiar orange and pink of instagram or the solid, faithful blue of Facebook or even the alluring yellow of Snapchat, and when I don’t see those apps I remember I deleted them and I feel an odd mixture of smugness and frustration.

I think, what am I to do with myself now??

There is a large pile of books on my bedside table that I now attack more than I did before. I write in my diary way more often, and I always wash up after dinner now, instead of lounging on the sofa after a meal scrolling through social media to nosy at what everybody else had for dinner and what their mums thought of the lasagne they made.

I feel a lot of negativity.

Social media felt a bit like my lifeline when I was lonely.

I am certainly less lonely now, but I still feel like I’ve lost a dear connection.

I feel like the reason we are all so addicted to social media is because we feel connected to the people on it. And then we get disillusioned because we don’t feel as happy as those portrayed on it. And it’s just a vicious endless cycle of scrolling, searching for the joy, the serotonin, the addiction release, the activation of that part of the brain, and then pouff, it isn’t there, it isn’t real, and the desolation sets in.

So we start the scroll cycle again, refreshing the page, new stories, aha, I like these people, but it is the same old crap, regurgitated and shared a trillion times, same quotes said a million different ways, bubble butts and long captions being ‘open and raw and honest’ but filled with vanity and vague allusions to nonexistent issues. It is all meaningless. Like those vanity cakes Laura Ingalls’ mother used to make. The ones that are all decorative and stunning on the outside but filled with air when you bite into it. Yum.

Anyway. I don’t want to go back to that. I realised that the people I interact with on social media aren’t even my real friends, because those are the ones who call and text me.

I miss social media a lot, but it depresses me.

So that is just what I have been thinking about it all, really.

There is plenty of good in it, of course, but all I keep thinking of is how people back in the day used to drop by each other’s houses and there would be cake and tea and they would talk about all the goings on, and just get to know each other better and take care of each other. Like my grandma and my mum would always have people over at their homes, and serve them dinners and lunches, even if they turned up unannounced, and then I would listen to the chatter and the natter, and it was very lively and joyful, even if sometimes the visits themselves weren’t. Like that woman who had a nervous breakdown and her daughter was desolate, but my grandma and mother took them both in and there was talking all night and calling of relatives and taking care of daughters, and Len would you give your bed to her and then it was a sleepover and we did colouring and played games and then she was laughing even while an ambulance arrived silently downstairs to take her mother away from a while.

There was this warmth. Blankets and care and attention and love.

And I feel like maybe this is what I am trying to get from social media, but because I am an outsider looking into someone else’s private life, I feel empty and left out.

And we don’t do this ‘dropping by to someone’s house for a natter’ thing anymore. It’s seen as rude. I tried to get to know my neighbour by taking her a cake and she blanked me. I wasn’t offended, I get it, everybody is suspicious now, but back in the day, all the neighbours knew each other, at least where I was from, and looked out for each other, and knew each other’s kids and routines and there was this social element to life that is severely lacking now.

And this might not be relevant but today I was in Starbucks helping my husband write a research proposal, and there was this dad with two daughters who came in to get some drinks and sit together, and the whole time he sat in silence watching them scroll down their phones, and I just watched them in fascination, because I didn’t have anything to scroll down on my phone, and it looked so odd and strange and I felt a little bit sad? Except the dad didn’t look at all sad, he just looked normal. Sipping his coffee. Leaning back, crossing his legs. They were all out together but they were completely silent, in their own little bubble worlds, like a Venn diagram but no intersections.

Maybe I lost connection because I was trying to connect to something unattainable? Maybe I lost the real connection that matters, because I was engrossed in something else? Like making friends at college and Uni, and real life opportunities that I could have taken but didn’t because I had the safety net of online friends and online gratification?

So, I just thought about all of this when I deleted my social media.

And, I am glad I did it.

I don’t like the feeling I have of emptiness and frustration, but social media won’t fix that, real life living will.

What do you think, if you managed to get this far?

Taking pictures of food.

Someone once said to me, when we were eating burgers in a restaurant, watching people at another table stand in every position imaginable to take photos of their own burgers, that over half of millennials don’t get to eat hot food, because by the time they’re done taking photos of their food, it’s cold!

Wow. That was a whopper of a sentence.

Anyway. By the time I munched this chocolate cake, it was still warm, thankfully. Although my arm has cramped from trying to take a good photo of a mediocre cake!

This cake is deceiving. It looks tasty but it actually has a strong olive oil taste to it. I think I added too much. Next time I will use less!

Why do we do it, though? Why do we take photos of our food? Why do we share it on social media? What is the psychology behind it? What do we hope to gain from it?

I admit, I do take photos of my food from time to time. When it looks good, when I am especially proud of it, or when I just am enamoured by the deliciousness of it all. I don’t always share it on social media, and when I do, I insert it into a blog. It is not informative at all. I have not shared the recipe (I will leave a link to it, however!), I am not posting to talk about its contents or reveal the decadent history of cake.

I am just posting to say, ‘Hey! I made cake! Check it out!‘

Is that so bad?

Is it so deplorable that an entire generation of people just want to share what their food looks like, to other people who will double tap that photo and nod to themselves, thinking, ‘I want me some of that burger. I wonder where they got it from.’

But whoops, they won’t need to ask, because the location is geotagged! Some great advertising right there! I will admit, all the restaurants I have been to in the past six months (well, three, to be exact) have been because one or other of my friends had posted a photo of what the food looked like there, along with a comment on the taste.

And because I am a glutton, I thought, ‘hey, I want me some of that burger.’

 

Are we a society of narcissists?

Lately I have been very disillusioned with society. Not just because Donald Trump won. I know his winning has caused global stress. Not just because of Brexit, or that 25% of voters in France are far right voters.

All I see are selfies every where.

‘Love your body’

‘Lose weight’

‘body image’

‘thinspiration’

‘looks amazing’

‘Wow you look so good’

‘Wow look at you stunner’

And the likes and comments pour in and in and in until they are drowning in comments about their looks.

‘You ugly’

It’s all about appearance. Don’t get me wrong, a selfie here and there is fine. But a constant stream of selfies makes one seem, at the very least, self absorbed.

And then people become so depressed because everybody seems to have such a good life but they don’t. And their compare and compare and all the heads are looking up at those who have more instead of those who have less.

‘Oh her house is nicer than mine’

‘Oh his looks are better than mine’

‘Oh how come he can afford such a nice car wth’

‘She’s ugly’ -she is actually stunning-

And the SELFIES. Instagram is the WORST. All my friends, constantly uploading exact replicas of their face at a particular angle with different coloured lipstick on.

‘Ugh look at my eyebags’

‘Feeling pretty today’

I just feel like society is all a ruse. Nothing is real. People are just projecting themselves out there, hungry for attention. If you look at those who don’t have as much as you do, you become thankful for what you do have. And you become more content, and less ravenous for those likes, for people to appreciate you, for more and higher and better and bigger.

The other day I was on the train and there was a man sitting a few rows ahead of me, blaring music out from his phone. Three people stood up and walked away from him, but he was oblivious. One man tutted loudly and glared at him as he walked past, and the offender waggled his eyebrows at him, and did a little shoulder shake. It made me laugh. I admit, I was a little annoyed with the music, I was tired and his music didn’t sit well in my ears. but I didn’t say anything. So, this guy was happy at 6am in the morning. Why kill a guy’s buzz? Let him be.

I don’t know why that situation depressed me so much.

The screen over the carriage door said, ‘This train is for Stanstead Airport, via Leicester.’

And I thought to myself, what if I didn’t get off at Leicester. What if I just skipped work altogether and went off to Stanstead Airport. Bought a ticket to Somewhere with whatever I had in my account, and escaped it all. But then I realised that wherever I go there will be humans, and humans just don’t make me happy.

They are just so self involved. I am so self involved. A lot of people are. Not all of them, of course. But so many people are.

I want to escape but I don’t know where I want to go.

Maybe I have SAD, now? It probably is that. Lack of vitamin D causes depression, apparently.

Maybe I need to be nicer to other people. Cynicism is not healthy.

So, what do you think? Are we all becoming narcissists? Is this ease of access making it simpler for narcissists to bud and grow, when before such ideas would be smacked right out of their silly little heads?

Narcissus