A New Day
Today is a really hard day for a lot of people, myself included. It’s not that things didn't go as I expected, because I was fully aware that Harris might not get elected. But the stark reality of our social, political, and media landscape is a hard one to reckon with.
Personally, I feel it is time to greet Pluto in Aquarius with major shift in how I show up in the world. I’ve tried to do a digital detox before, and have quit Facebook and Instagram at least three times only to come back again when the itch of FOMO creeps in.
I am such a perfectionist, a driven achiever, that I find myself always twisting and morphing myself and my offerings to try and reach more and more people. there is a sense of moral obligation to the collective that I know is much larger than I need it to be.
Today is a day to burn down what no longer serves us, and we must begin in our personal lives, the place where we have the mot insight and control. I no longer want to be beholden to the algorithm. I’m tired of strategy. That actually feels like the truest statement I’ve made in a while and one that I know aligns with my human design.
On social media, I know I am constantly censoring myself and designing my creative content to fit within the norms and expectations of the platform. When I used to blog more often, I felt free of those limitations. The blog is a personal space where we can express ourselves free of judgment. Being active on social media feels like standing up during a class high school and trying to make a presentation in a way that expresses your full range of knowledge and insight while still appealing to the cool kids in the back row.
I’m ready to go deeper into my own life, to cultivate my interests and creative work on a slower, more personal level that is not driven by the need to be seen, recognized, and liked in the social media space.
This is not to say I’m quitting social media completely. But I am going to consciously change how I approach technology in this new Aquarian Age.
Here are some things that I am committing to myself that may shape the way I spend my days going forward:
Check social media 1x a week
Check personal email 1x a day
Get a new digital camera and go back to walking in and photographing nature
Dig more deeply into my analog collage practice
Return to doing morning pages
Read paper books instead of books on my phone (I don’t have an ipad or kindle)
Consciously listen to music more frequently instead of having the TV on in the background
I’m not sure yet how I will approach my consumption of new and current events. I know I am no longer going to watch CNN or any of the major news outlets. There is nothing new being said anywhere there and I know there is a way to stay informed without subjecting myself to journalistic abuse. Also, I know I cannot see or hear anything from TFG without being physically ill, so I want to avoid seeing anything even accidentally presidential.
As for being present in the collective, I am definitely going to return to blogging. And honestly I don’t care who sees it or reads it. I might also make the same posts available in my substack, but we’ll see where that goes. Like I said earlier, I am tired of being strategic because I don;t think that is my strength and I think it exhausts my personal resources. I am much better aligned with the practice of intuitive response. I need to be responding to life as it unfolds in front of me, not planning how I want things to be. That is where the joy, magic, and satisfaction life in my life.
I am also going to work on not letting online culture dictate how I show up in this space. I have ideas and opinions, and I no longer want to hesitate in sharing them here because they are not part of a larger brand strategy. I’m not going to operate from a place of fear or of apprehension about being judged. It’s time to show up authentically in order to fully heal my soul. And that is perhaps the most significant contribution I can make in our changing times.
