HOW SOCIAL MEDIA KILLED MY ANONYMITY?

“It takes discipline not to let social media steal your time.” Alexis Ohanian

I was a single mother I learned how to show up like a smiling shadow. No one wanted the five foot ten blonde around in ‘married-vile’. At the time I seemed to be surrounded by marrieds. I had to blend in and that was all right, I was a single I knew the divide. My job was my kids.

Then social media popped, and with a BANG.

The good news was I could click buttons and find a date, that was handy. The bad news was not only celebrities were getting their photos taken, Facebook blew up and orbited. I found that my blending days of being a shadow were over.  I did not know how significant that would be to me until later.

I rather liked the days I could fade into the background, if I so choose. A faceless privacy that I held dear.

No longer! Now it is a pose, smile, body posture, proper outfit, glasses held high, snap, you are on social media. What if I did not want my exes, or nosey neighbors to know I am in fabulous town, with fabulous friends, having the perfect cocktail, watching the stunning sunset? My cover was blown, the jig is up, I no longer can wear the same outfit twice because ten thousand of my closest friend on Facebook and beyond can see, look back, and take notes.

They can shamelessly go for the one up-manship, or feel crappy they are not sailing the same seas as I. The media has become so convoluted, and polluted that we endlessly compare our moments with other people’s moments. This is a dog we feed, and feed into.

Read more about my love journey of dating and mishaps that you will surely love at www.amanforeverypurpose.com.

Is it not Zen to just do and be where we are in life? When did we lose track of simpler times? Was it magazines, tabloids, television, social media that has kicked it up to the cosmos? Or is it us?

What do we do? Hide? Good luck with that.

So then what? Forge forward with your dreams, disregard the outfits? Seems a tall order.

I have written a book and much of the promotion is right there on social media. Do I love it or hate it? Killing privacy and posting information within a photo is shady at best, yet it sells. Is it everyone’s business to know I have now become a vegetarian and this is a photo of my perfect plant base diet? Really no. No one’s beeswax but there it is nonetheless.

This concept fascinates me to the nth degree.

Let’s take a look at a simple thing, how I buy wine, by the price and the label? In light of media posts, do I need to have the proper label at all times?  Presenting myself with style and grace? That seems daunting…. Do I need to sell myself like the wine bottles? Maybe I do.

I know it is a fix for some, and obsession for others that check first thing in the morning, an interest for others, and simply a great yawn for some. Some may actually find putting away social media and reading a good book more enlightening.

I challenge you to set one week aside and do not even peek at what others are doing and focus on what you are doing. Allow a week to become a month, I double dare you. That’d change your life.

You will not be forgotten, those who love you are the ones that matter the most.

When you take a break read my book I triple dare you.

My Mantra: “The thirty-day book challenge awaits us all”