Thoughts on Social Media Lately

Anne Sexton Quote - Graphic by Christine Csencsitz for Cats & Coffee

I don’t know about you all, but I’ve been feeling really uninspired lately.

Maybe it’s because we’re coming up on a year of social distancing, but it’s just hard to find the inspired in the mundane lately — to find moments not things. 

The long-learned-notions of the value of productivity are difficult to disregard, and the fact that I’ve been feeling less-than-productive in what I love has made channeling my creativity more difficult than usual. I’m an anxious person, prone to over-thinking, stifling perfectionism, and distraction. My attention span lately has been incredibly limited, and I know from talking with friends and family that I’m not the only one dealing with this.

I’ve been feeling this lack of inspiration in particular with Instagram, with pressure — self-imposed or otherwise — to be creative all the time and to change focus based on what the app is pushing at the moment. 

This feeling is incredibly frustrating, because I generally love Instagram! I love the connectivity it fosters, the pretty pictures and chatty captions, and the sense of community with people I would never otherwise have the opportunity to meet. It has been a huge resource over this past year, with various levels of lockdown and quarantining.

Whether you’re a creative type or not, an introvert or an extrovert, humans are social beings. A year of social distancing, even for us introverts, is a lot. And it is really hard to feel like our reach to each other — in this moment, social media — is being limited by a computer program’s algorithmic preferences. 

I am a writer and a sometimes-photographer. The reality of running a blog has necessitated the latter, which I do enjoy. But the former is what really nourishes me, and the former is what I feel I’ve been pushing to the back burner and losing lately.  

I enjoy seeing videos and the like on Instagram and TikTok, but video is not my strong suit. It’s not something I’m particularly interested in, and that is ok. Besides the fact that video editing is a whole other skill I’m trying to take on, I get pretty self-conscious about the whole thing. Practice makes perfect, I know, but as an INTJ introvert…it’s just hard. 

Anyway, I just wanted to share this because I feel like I’ve been bottling these frustrations and self-judgments up for some time, disregarding them as silly or something I should just deal with. Are there bigger things going on in the world? Sure. Does that mean these feelings don’t matter? No.

So, if any of this resonated with you, just know you’re not alone and I’m cheering for you.

P.S. Please wear masks, wash your hands, and practice social distancing, so we can get out of this mess soon.