I Deleted All My Social Media

I have never felt better now that I have little to no social media presence online. 

It was the best decision I have ever made. And possibly the worst. 

Where do I begin?  

You see a few years ago, I would have never even thought about deleting all of my social media or logging out of it completely. 

I worked with a few small businesses to help start conversations on all the platforms. I helped build ads and crafted content and business-related images. 

I used my niece's wedding photo in trade magazines. I created a few billboards.  

Industry trends were all I read about. I championed the latest ideas and implemented them as they came across my feeds. 

I sold myself on the premise that I could help businesses stay relevant. 

And for a while, I was sex. 

Everyone in my circles asked for my opinions or tried to get me to help with their campaigns.

What started as a quick way to make some extra cash once a month, turned into something that I didn’t anticipate. I continued to commit because the money was decent. 

Now it is not to say I was racking in the thousands. If that was the case, I would still be plugged in. 

It’s just that as time passed, I was becoming more disconnected from the world around me. 

Between a 9-5, my obsession with reading and writing, and now social media management, I was becoming a version of myself that was downright distasteful. 

It didn’t help that I was drinking heavily and the amount of marijuana I smoked probably funded a cartel outpost along the American-Mexican border. 

I had this visual of my black and white photo hanging on a back wall with the inscription; “Presentado gracias al generoso patrocinio de un Gringo Norteamericano”

English translation; “Brought to you by the generous patronage of a North American Gringo”

Anyway, I was a mess. And connecting for hours every day so I could figure out my next move paid its toll on my psyche. 

My single goal was to stay relevant in this growing market. What I didn’t take into consideration was the cost. 

Everything suffered. I would stay up in the early hours on my feeds sharing posts. I stalked competition for any variance so I could adapt.  

I lashed out at people who didn’t share the same concepts that I did and became an otherwise S.O.B.

It ate at me and everything suffered. 

After some time, I decided to take a break. I was so heavily invested in someone else's success that I was straining myself. 

The money wasn’t worth it, and neither was trying to convince businesses who otherwise did not have a social media presence of the importance of analytics and the latest trends. 

I crumbled. 

So I made a promise to myself that I would log off my accounts and take a much welcomed social media detox. 

What I should have also considered was the drugs and alcohol as well, but that is for another story. 

So for 30 days, I avoided social media. 

Thankfully my brain remembered a time before Facebook, and the transition to not posting about my daily life or the business lives of others had little effect on me. It felt liberating. 

Except on the 31st day, I was back online. 

The first few weeks felt amazing. I caught up on everything I thought I missed. I doubled down on the newest trends and pushed myself even further.

I hashtagged myself back into the digital landscape and tried to make strides.

And I went nowhere. Nothing seemed to work. I got discouraged fairly quickly. 

The first business that I helped, and thought would still want my input, decided that they wanted to change course and go with someone else. 

The gym I was helping put their story on social media, told me that after considerable thought, they didn’t like the direction I was going. 

One of their new trainers had mentioned interest in offering a new perspective so they wanted to give her a shot. 

One by one everything evaporated. And I was no longer someone people wanted to get into bed with. 

I was no longer sex. I was the icky person at the end of the night that even beer goggles couldn’t make pretty. 

I turned inward and focused on reading and writing. However, I never shared anything in the way of my writing. It felt too personal at the time. 

My social media accounts were still active, and I scanned most of what everyone else posted. I just didn’t participate. 

Yet my unease still grew. I was experiencing FOMO. I internalized and imagined what was wrong with me after I closed an app. 

My news feeds would put me in fits of rage at the drop of a hat. Every time I logged back in, I felt triggered about random stuff. 

I had irrational anger and resentment toward people and places. 

Something inside of me revolted. Social Media didn’t feel social. Even if it ever did. 

It wasn’t until several months before my sobriety journey that I decided to delete my social media presence altogether.

Gone were unrealistic filtered photos of strangers and 180-character prompts. I stopped watching video shorts. 

No longer was I tethered to my phone because of notifications.

The first couple of weeks were difficult but since I can entertain myself quite easily, it didn’t last long.  

And the world became quiet. A silence came over my mind. And I felt a peace that I can only faintly remember.

Now here I am. 

The catch-22 of all of this is, that for me to continue my writing journey, I have to reactivate my accounts. If I want to build an audience, I have to jump back into the fray. 

I just don’t want to do that. I don’t think my writing or myself will benefit. 

Sure the exposure for my writing will be good, but my mental health will not. 

How do I come to terms with wanting to be a writer when the delivery system is something I want to stay away from? 

I want to participate in the conversation, but the notion of spending countless hours chained to an algorithm so that I have the off chance of success doesn’t feel genuine. 

To date, I still have Medium, LinkedIn, and Substack. And even then, I feel cagey for spending more than 20 minutes a day on each platform.

It’s even harder to sell myself as a content creator when I have no personal social media accounts to verify my credentials. 

There are other avenues to help me achieve my goal of being a full-time writer, but how much do I have to take away from myself and my writing to cross that finish line? 

Especially now when social media is so embedded in our daily lives.