I don't consider myself an influencer, but I have a social media following. I last posted a few months ago, but I've thought about posting more than I think is average. I'm not breaking up with social media, but I am shifting my relationship to it, and this book I read recently is helping guide my direction.
One of The 12 Week Year's prompts encourages you to grade your week. How you grade yourself is up to you, but that you do it is essential to the author's framework. I like that the grading system is personal. I set up my rulers and hold myself accountable for meeting them, surpassing them, or falling short.
I realized this was missing in my life because my biggest source of accountability and judgment for the last decade or so has been the Internet.
The Internet, for me, wasn't always bad. During seasons of intense grief or mental health struggles, social media was a life raft. Social media was a really nice place to go to connect with others who were experiencing similar feelings or navigating the same waters. Those people held me accountable for showing up but also for pushing through, like a virtual support group that met whenever I wanted them to.
I think that's one of the best aspects of social media networks as a whole, but as the platforms grew, so did the pressure to perform and the expectations to reveal.
No longer was it a come as you are, but instead, it was, "Come here right now, tell me everything about you, and also, be who I want you to be."
While I didn't see this personally trickle into my social media communities, it became the indisputable name of the game. I saw it all over others' comment sections and noticed that how they answered was the reason behind their stunted or propelled growth. The demanding, conditional tone was consistent and expected to be listened to.
Now, we all have a decision to make. Since the next generation of influencers, creators, or regular people looking for connective tissue through a difficult time were born into this Internet, signing up for these platforms in the first place is seen as their acceptance of the status quo. The rest of us have to decide if we want to continue renting space here.
Freya India's essay on an adjacent topic shows just how bad our online behavior has gotten. The title alone — You Don't Need To Document Everything — is a plea but also a reminder of an option that often evades our very online world. In my earlier years on social media, I may have felt a small tug to share all parts of myself, but today, the requirement is the equivalent of a doggy cheese tax any time we open the cheese drawer that is TikTok or Instagram.
It's a price that I've felt uncomfortable paying for a while now. It's a price I see a lot of people paying online in search of a sense of purpose or validation that the Internet is never going to be able to offer them.
I think this is why I've liked the 12-week year practice of grading my own week. Lately, I ask myself big questions instead of asking them to an audience of many. Like, Do I 'heart' every decision I've made? Can I 'comment' on how I messed up or where I want to grow? Is it possible for me to 'unfollow' or 'unsubscribe' from habits, people, or energies that don't serve me moving forward? Did my life play out in ways that made me happy and fulfilled even if no one in a general audience witnessed them?
Do I like it more here now when I don't have to capture all of it to post about it later?
Yeah, 10/10 would recommend.