My husband has been out of town this past week, and a good deal this month. That combined with the anniversary of my grandmother’s passing, and my mother getting admitted to the hospital for what would become the end of her life, and the winter blues have made the stakes higher than ever to get my digital boundaries in check. All the systems that usually help me get out of my head and into the body of a person with agency and control over her life had started to fail me at the end of last year. Someone told me once that grief is a portal, and I repeat it to myself all the time, because it’s true. I have changed over the past year, and with that, I have had to let go of so many of the ideas I’ve had about what I need, what caring for myself looks like, and what works to get me out of a funk.
I’ve talked a lot about digital boundaries, but one thing that might surprise you is that I still love social media. As an entrepreneur, I need it for my business. It’s how people find me and connect with me. That connection one day motivates them to email me and ask to work together, which, of course, is an end goal of every person who works for themselves. I also find it deeply inspiring. I have found and followed quilters and writers and artists of all kinds who help me in my creative practice simply by existing online as themselves. Instead of exiting social media, I’d like to be part of that creative chorus. I do not wish to remove myself from social media; I just want to be smarter about it and use my time in a way that makes my life feel fuller and more joyful.
For the past couple of weeks, I have been really good at being in charge of my social media usage. It has taken a lot of determination and willpower, and using my brick to turn my smartphone into a dumb phone for the times when my willpower and determination fail me (which is awesome).
And I think somewhere, deep down, I was tired of feeling like shit all the time because I couldn’t keep myself from numbing out and getting mindless in front of a carousel of my friends’ highlight reels, what famous people are buying, and the worst stuff I’ve ever seen. Reader, scrolling endlessly through the internet no longer sparks joy, and I’m betting it might be the same for you.
Something happened last week that was like an epiphany for several reasons, and it felt worth sharing.
I started the day with my phone bricked, because that’s what works best for me right now.
I woke up, listened to The Daily while stretching, and wrote a to-do list for the morning.
When it came time for me to leave my house for work, I hadn’t gotten everything on my list done, and instead of beating myself up, as I normally tend to do, I just accepted it. My first thought wasn’t that I should have tried harder or done more; it was that I must have put too many things on my to-do list.
Because my digital boundaries were in check, I was able to show myself compassion because I knew that I’d worked within my values and just not gotten to everything on the list. There’s a time in the not so distant past (8 weeks ago) where this kind of thing would have lead me to a shame spiral.
Handling myself with this kind of compassion isn’t something I’ve experienced for a very long time.
I’ve been working on being kind to myself, after a year of my tendency to be hard on myself coming to a crescendo. A couple of weeks ago, I got sucked into a spiral where I felt really incapable of anything because I’d spent the weekend trying to make good muffins, only for every subsequent attempt turning out less good than my first batch. It caused a crash-out and a big cry, and then my husband sat me down and told me he’d noticed a pattern of me judging myself instead of enjoying what I was doing.
Since then, I have been on a crusade to be nicer to myself and more understanding of the ways that I do things, and the way I’m moving through the world and my life now. With that in mind, and combined with holding some boundaries around social media, I really feel like I am looking at the world anew. I no longer feel like I am my own worst critic, or even worse, my enemy. I’ve started to look at myself as a friend, who is still grieving and who is finding her joy again and again, every single day. My eyes are clear, and I can see myself in a new light.
And this week, I am back in your inbox after not being here for a while. My tendency would be to apologize, or overexplain, and frankly, I’ve written both of those newsletters, and they didn’t feel reflective of where I am right now. Instead, I would just like to say that I’m glad to be here, and I look forward to creating the space to be here more in the future.
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