Social Butterfly

I remember when I decided I was going to make friends with my classmates. It was the summer after seventh grade and I decided that I would talk to people and to be friendly. In my memory I blossomed. I spent high school and college years building relationships with incredible people who would become tried and true. Ugh… I love my friends so much.

Fast forward to 2020. I went home for spring break and everything changed. During the quarantine I developed and nurtured many parasocial relationships via social media. Incredible people from around the world taught me so much. I learned to romanticize life. I learned how to focus my energy and multiply my experiences in a way that serves myself and my community. My life is quantifiably better for what I did with my time and experiences in that time.

Fast forward again to November 2022 when I decided to get off of social media and spend more time doing things that made me happy. It’s now January and I’m shocked I say shocked to only now realize how much of my outgoing personality was being cared for by social media. I deeply value taking care of people and cheering for people. Continued quasi-quarantine combined with the loss of several hours a day of interacting with people online has highlighted a lack of real life day to day people-ing. I think the fix is going to be texting way more people way more often. Especially since most of my online people I know in real life, too. We shall see how this goes.

xoxo