Tag: social media

My 2021 Year in Review, Part II

bittersweetnugget1 Comment
Just a few of the books I read in 2021: inward and clarity & connection by yung pueblo, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, and Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh

When I launched this blog in 2016, I did so to “document my attempt to stretch myself and experience all the interesting bends and branches in life that are calling to me.” Five years later, I’ve pretty much kept to that original mission.

At the close of 2021, I am starting a new practice of giving myself a pat on the back for the stretching I’ve done over the past 12 months. This is the second part of my year in review. If you missed the first part, feel free to check it out first.

Reading

From childhood through my 20s, I was a voracious reader. But somewhere along the way my reading trickled down to a handful of books a year. I’m a slow reader because I like to reread lines several times and turn the ideas over in my head. For the last decade, I focused on reading political/social commentary, which can be exhausting, so I was taking long breaks between books. In 2020, I read a mere six and a half books.

So, I set a goal to read more books in 2021—no precise number, just to keep reading. I alternated fiction with non-fiction, which proved to be super helpful. Now, I’m ending the year having read 28 books!

I read books from genres outside of my comfort zone, works set in other countries and cultures, and books that addressed race, sexuality, and the natural world. Several books were challenging, but I persisted. And I did give myself permission to set aside two books to finish another time (maybe).

One of the books I’m counting toward my tally was the journal/workbook What’s Your Story? by Rebecca Walker and Lily Diamond. This book challenged me to write rather than read, though it also included some beautiful writing at the opening of each section. Instead of marking up the book, I typed up my responses in a Word doc, and when I looked back, I discovered that I wrote more than 40,000 words!

I created a fun graphic summarizing my reading for the year, and I’m going to post it on my Instagram profile. My profile is @lisamaybennett if you want to check it out.

I’m tempted to try to read even more books in 2022, but I’m not going to pressure myself—I’m just going to keep reading, book after book.

Connection

Looking back at the people with whom I’ve been in contact over 2021, I am immensely grateful to have so many wonderful folks in my life.

This was the year that I reached out to a wide range of friends and acquaintances to ask if they would test read my manuscript. I was delighted by the number of people who said yes, and we went on to have many interesting exchanges. I became good friends with a woman down the street through this process, and I connected online with an independent author who lives in the same town where I grew up.

My husband and I have gotten to know our next-door neighbors better this year, as well as other families who live on the block. I should probably credit our dog, Toby, with helping us make new friends—he is a great ambassador!

I am still in contact with two of the women I met through a Zoom grief group that I joined more than a year ago. My friend who passed away nearly two years ago had a pretty big family, and I have been in touch with two of her nieces and her sister-in-law, which has been a great comfort to me. And I continue to text and talk regularly with my closest friends.

Once we were all vaccinated, we had quite a few visitors out to the house this summer. I guess I’m what you might call an extroverted introvert (or an introverted extrovert?). I love spending time with people and talking with them, but I also value my quiet, alone time. Sometimes it’s hard to find the right balance, so I may have overdone it in 2021. But I can’t say that I would change a thing.

Media and Tech Use

This is the one category where I tried to do less in 2021 rather than more. Since I was a kid, I’ve loved watching television, reading magazines, and following celebrity culture. I was the perfect target audience for the internet and social media.

Over the past five years, I’ve been working on spending less time watching TV and scrolling on my phone. This year, my TV consumption finally settled in at a level with which I’m comfortable. I no longer watch TV during the morning, day, or early evening, and I only sit down to watch it when I know what show or movie I’m going to watch. My cable news viewing has declined dramatically, and I feel less tense as a result.

I still struggled with social media use in 2021. I no longer argue with folks in the comments, and on the rare occasion when I do, I am quickly reminded why I steer clear of doing so. But social media always seems to find a new way to grab me. I have never watched a single episode of any Kardashian show, and yet I find myself watching videos of Kylie and Kendall Jenner on Instagram as well as the dancing and fashion videos that are served up to me through ads and the search function.

In the first part of this review, I promised myself I would focus on how far I’ve come, not on how far I still have to go. So, I’m not going to go over the steps I want to take in 2022—I’ll write more about this next year. Instead, I will state for the record that I shifted substantial blocks of my time this year from media consumption to creative endeavors and other habits that I wanted to develop.  

Rest

For decades I have suffered from various forms of insomnia. Over the past five years, my sleep has vastly improved, but it still feels like the final frontier for me, health-wise. I ended 2021 strong by reducing the time that I typically spend watching TV in bed and replacing it with reading. This seems to be helping me sleep through the night better.

Even when I get a good night’s rest, I am still a big fan of napping. This was the year that I finally decided to accept that I love afternoon naps. I take one as often as I can, and I’ve released the shame that I used to feel about doing so.

There’s lots more I did this year, including helping care for my mom and managing home improvement projects (like an unexpected roof replacement). I even experimented with my usual holiday traditions and wrote a piece about it for Medium.

I highly recommend sitting down and giving yourself props for all that you’ve done in 2021. This includes the things you stopped doing and the boundaries you created and enforced. You are more awesome than you realize. I know because I talked to a lot of people this year, and I was consistently impressed with your strength, resourcefulness, and insight.

In case you missed it: Part I of my Year in Review

Social Media and Me: It’s Complicated

bittersweetnugget2 Comments
Embrace the Lake is just one of my Instagram accounts!

Last week a friend announced on Facebook that they would be scaling back their level of engagement on the platform. Declarations of temporary breaks or permanent departures from social media have become increasingly common. I’ve done this myself several times over the past five years, typically returning with a fresh perspective on the benefits these networks offer and the pitfalls they present.

Three years ago, I posted an article on LinkedIn identifying the Five Ways Social Media Can Lift Our Lives. This morning I went back and re-read that piece, and I still agree with every word of it. In fact, the former supervisor mentioned in the opening of that article sent me a friendly text message just the other night. Once again, I was reminded that social media has helped our friendship thrive beyond the handful of years that we worked together.

When I joined Facebook and Twitter back in 2008, it was primarily for my job. I couldn’t imagine how I would use social media personally. I remember thinking how ridiculous it would be to post that I had just done some yardwork or gone grocery shopping. And yet, in the time since then, it has become perfectly acceptable for users to regularly update their friends and followers on the most mundane aspects of their lives.

To test this out, I opened Facebook, and within seconds I was able to learn what someone had for dinner last night, how much exercise another person has been doing for the past month, and the kind of behavior a third person considers cringey on Zoom calls.

To be clear, I am not here to complain about over-sharing. If you are someone who posts multiple times a day, I salute you! I enjoy seeing what everyone is up to, honest.

I love to talk about my life and my thoughts as much, if not more, than the next person. For years I have welcomed the green light to post endless photos of my cats, my political viewpoints, and pics of my meals.

But somewhere along the way the novelty and utility morphed into something closer to an addiction. The expectation that I share my life in real-time because others were doing so began to feel oppressive.

These days, I am barely on Facebook. I deleted the app from my phone more than a year ago, and I feel much better for it. No longer do I get sucked into pointless arguments in the comments, and I am able to keep my scrolling to two short sessions per day (well, mostly).

TikTok came and went on my phone in a matter of weeks due to my obsessive nature, and I’m on Clubhouse, but I’ve yet to actually do anything on there.

Instagram is a different story. I have four individual accounts that I feel compelled to update regularly, which can stress me out—even though it is my choice to keep these balls in the air. I enjoy posting on IG and cherish the communities that have developed on the platform, but sometimes it feels like a 24-7 personal branding competition.

I’ve started hating how every time I do something, I wonder if I should post about it. I can’t take a photo or form an opinion without assessing its post-worthiness. Or, if I haven’t posted on one of my Instagram accounts in a while, I feel the need to generate ideas. It’s like I’ve taken on the role of digital marketing and public relations for the business of simply being myself. And don’t get me started on how, as a writer, I should totally have a newsletter by now!

Currently, I’m experimenting with posting only when I truly feel inspired versus pushing myself to keep up a regular schedule. I’m in search of the right balance of posting, consuming, and commenting that makes me feel connected to others without getting all angsty about it. One day I might decide that no such balance exists, and that will be the day I leave social media altogether. But not yet.   

In the meantime, consider following me on FB or IG @lisamaybennett!

Posts Against Humanity

bittersweetnuggetLeave a comment

Have you ever started a sentence with “I do not understand how a person can…” or “I’m not sure why people don’t…”? Many of us do it. Such a statement sounds like curiosity about human nature, but usually it is an expression of frustration with those who don’t act or think as we do.

I have a folder on my computer containing screenshots of social media posts and comments that demonstrate an irritation with how foolish people can be. These are not the nastiest posts on the Internet. They’re the everyday digs meant to spotlight our wisdom compared to someone else’s ignorance.    

I’m not trying to shame anyone, but I believe our tendency to puff ourselves up by belittling others is a human trait that sows division while accomplishing nothing. Here are some specific examples from my collection:

Example 1: Toughen Up, Snowflake

My neighborhood has a Facebook group where people gather to debate anything and everything. One year our homeowner’s association sent out an email suggesting that, due to a forecast of heavy rain and winds for Oct. 31, Halloween activities should take place on Nov. 1. An intense online battle followed.

Common reactions included, “I have no idea how I survived my childhood trick or treating in not wonderful weather! I’m SO lucky I lived to see adulthood,” and “Halloween is on October 31 . . . Come to my house on Friday and you get NADA!” and “I’m gonna laugh when it doesn’t rain.”

Predictably, it didn’t rain until after trick-or-treating hours, and the Oct. 31 purists did, in fact, report that they were enjoying a good chuckle.

Most people were ok with choosing between Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, and some promised to hand out candy on both nights. But a vocal minority made clear that they thought anyone opting for the Nov. 1 alternative was raising their kids to be wimps.

Example 2:  You Dog is a Hot Mess

A neighbor once commented that their dog hates being home alone, and someone theorized: “Your dog has separation anxiety because you’ve failed to properly train her.” When a third person suggested that the dog in question might be a rescue with trauma issues, the reply was, “You can always re-train a dog. Failure to do so is mistreatment because it is stressful for the dog to live that way.” Is advice offered in this manner ever helpful, or was it more important for this commenter to project their righteousness?

Example 3: Shaming the Kiddos

Some people are even willing to shame their own children! An acquaintance posted a photo of a small child sitting on the floor of a bedroom, with their face buried in their arms. The caption read, “Someone lost their doorknob privileges…” with an empty doorknob hole clearly visible. Was the goal here disciplining a child or scoring some online laughs from other adults?

Maybe I’m overreacting. Perhaps someone will accuse me of having “a case of the angry sads,” or a commenter will note: “Some people just need to obsess their way into writing a blog about pretty much anything. Grow up.”

Even if I am a big snowflake, collecting these examples has helped me become more aware of my own inclination to elevate my ego atop a hill of mockery and scorn. Now, I try to catch myself when I start to say, “I don’t understand why people…” and I make an effort to do just that—understand.

Lessons Learned From My Media Break

bittersweetnugget2 Comments

During Thanksgiving week, I took seven days off from social media, television, and podcasts. I’ve unplugged from media before with fruitful results. This round was prompted by Jocelyn K. Glei’s course RESET. Glei suggests taking a break from “inputs that play a huge role in the life of your mind” in order to “open up space for new ideas to flow.”

I’ve been writing a book, so I was eager to see if dramatically reducing external inputs could spark creativity and promote productivity. Full confession: I cheated more than once. However, it was still an illuminating experiment. Three observations stood out:

Silence Equals Discomfort

While making lunch, cleaning, or driving, I would normally listen to podcasts or my own music playlists. Once I eliminated these, I did not like the way I filled up the silence by singing the same lines from the same handful of songs over and over. My chattering mind is accustomed to filling in the blank spots. So, I tried listening to classical music to ease the transition. By the end of the week, I was better able to tolerate short quiet stretches, and I started generating ideas in these open windows.

I’ve come to think of this as giving my brain “me” time. The more silence I give myself, the better my mind gets at focusing my scattered mental energy. Like building muscles, developing a deep comfort with quiet time will take dedication and repetition.

Cable News Makes Me Anxious

One night I was meditating upstairs while my husband was watching TV downstairs. I could sense immediately when he switched to cable news by how angry the voices sounded. I know there’s a lot to be mad about in our world, but this shift in perspective helped me realize how unhealthy it is to pump so much tension into my brain every day.

With more time at home this year, my cable news routine had devolved to include watching my favorite news show on the iPad while preparing dinner, and then my husband and I might watch more news in the living room and again in the bedroom before going to sleep. Thanks to my media break, we rarely tune into cable news now, and I feel much calmer. We do listen to a brief news podcast while eating breakfast—just 15 minutes or less compared to the two hours I had been consuming daily.

Media is Like Pecan Pie

We bought a store-made pecan pie for Thanksgiving this year and salted caramel ice cream to go with it. It was delicious, yet I would never think to eat such a decadent desert regularly, let alone multiple times a day. Perhaps I should treat TV, podcasts, and social media more like pie and less like a staple in my diet.

Balance is everything. When I spend less time on screens, I read books, meditate, and exercise more. And I’ve come to the conclusion that social media works best for me as a tool rather than an endless conversation—I have to know why I’m on there.

But you know what? After cheating several nights in a row, I came to accept that my husband and I enjoy watching TV together in the evenings. And that’s ok. It’s also ok for me to skip a night now and then to write or do yoga.

Media and technology add value to our lives, if used mindfully. I’ve learned that occasional breaks shine light on my habits and alert me to how these inputs might be crowding out other positive experiences.

Your Cluttered House

bittersweetnugget1 Comment

In my last blog post I compared a worn-out couch sitting in your living room to a bad habit taking up space in your life. Both the couch and the habit need to go, but you must make a plan for what to put in the spots that they occupy. Now I would like to propose a follow-up analogy—a cluttered house.

Let’s say you inherit a cabin in the woods from a distant relative. You didn’t even know someone in your family had a getaway house! You head out to the cabin, and you discover that the place is a mess. Apparently this relative was a bit of a hoarder.

Towering piles of books, newspapers, and magazines are everywhere. The kitchen is littered with empty jars, broken toasters, and abandoned cereal boxes. The bathroom is crowded with old towels, shampoo bottles, and loads of extra toilet paper. The bedroom is bursting with creepy dolls and other thrift store purchases.

Where do you start? Maybe you should just burn it all down you think, only half joking. You were so excited about spending long weekends and summer vacations at your very own cabin, so you reluctantly get cleaning.

You start with the biggest fire hazard—those ancient newspapers and magazines in the living room. It takes a lot of hard work, but you feel great once you’ve removed all that paper from the house. Then, you start to see an abundance of plastic grocery bags stuffed with trash that had been tucked in between the piles.

With the bags tossed, you move on to the other rooms. Room after room is the same: As you sweep away the junk that stands out the most, you uncover more stuff. There always seems to be more stuff.

This work takes time. You return to the cabin every weekend. Slowly, the floorboards, the bathroom tile, and the kitchen counters become visible. You can see the bones of the house. Now you must identify and address the structural issues that were hidden.

This house is us. The junk is all the unhealthy habits, coping mechanisms, and distractions that we’ve built up over our lives. The foundation, the walls, the windows, the roof—these represent our body, mind, heart, and soul. As we clear away the behaviors and beliefs that haven’t been serving us, we can pinpoint the issues underneath.  

I’ve been cleaning out my metaphorical house for more than three years. I started with my drinking because it was the towering pile that was getting in the way of the life I wanted to lead. Without the drinking, it became obvious that my TV and social media habits needed tackling.

There was and is no shortage of crap in my house. I am a hoarder of personal issues: Shopping and money-related anxiety, fixating on my weight and body image, people-pleasing, ruminating and catastrophizing, body-focused repetitive behaviors, procrastination tendencies, and so on.

This assortment of diversions, short-term solutions, and numbing techniques kept me from peering below the surface. Without all the clutter, I was able to get a good look at my self-doubt. Then I had to acknowledged that unless I wanted to fill myself up all over again with a new set of counter-productive habits, I needed to face my pain and my fears.

Keeping your personal foundation solid is an ongoing task, but much like a real house, if you want a nice place in which to live, you have to do the work!

The New Couch

bittersweetnugget1 Comment

I love analogies and metaphors. By translating abstract concepts into relatable situations, analogies promote understanding. Analogies and metaphors typically work best when they use everyday examples. Like a worn-out couch.

Imagine you have a sofa in your living room that is faded and sagging. It’s uncomfortable to sit on and stuffing is poking out of the arms.

But this couch has sentimental value. You’ve had it for a long time—perhaps it’s the first nice sofa you ever bought, or maybe your grandparents gave it to you.   

You know you need to replace this couch, so if you’re anything like me, you do one of two things…

A) After an embarrassing incident when a visiting relative struggled to extricate themselves from your sofa’s caved-in cushions, you banish it to an extra room or the garage. You now have one chair in your living room and a big empty space. You know you need to go buy a new couch, and you realize that if you keep putting off this task, you’ll be tempted to drag that dilapidated old thing back into the living room. Still, you procrastinate.

B) You go furniture shopping and fall in love with a snazzy new sofa. You purchase it, and the salesperson tells you it will be delivered in four weeks. You have plenty of time to make room for the new couch, right? But you put it off, and the next thing you know the furniture store is calling to set up a time to deliver your new sofa tomorrow, and your old one is still sitting right there.

In both cases, your shabby couch may be a reminder of good times, but it’s not doing its job anymore. At the same time, you have a living room with the appropriate amount of space for one couch. Zero couches will only work for so long, and two couches won’t work at all.

If you haven’t already guessed, the decrepit sofa in my story is a stand-in for any counter-productive behavior that is taking up space in your life. Like, say, social media scrolling, maxing out your credit cards, or gossiping. You may be well aware that you need to scale back or quit this habit entirely. But if you give it up without a plan for how to reallocate all the time and energy it’s been sucking up, you might find yourself right back where you started, like the couch-banisher in scenario A.

Or maybe you do have something you’ve been dreaming about—traveling the world, learning how to play the guitar, or starting a small business. Like the couch-shopper in scenario B, you have to make space in your life for this passion, otherwise where will you put it?

A little over three years ago I realized I was living in scenario B. My writing had been pushed aside while I drank wine and watched TV. I finally had to ditch alcohol and reduce my media consumption to make time for my writing and all the other things I wanted to do.

If you can relate to situation A or B, I’m pretty sure there’s an amazing new couch waiting for you. But you have to do the work of finding it and clearing the way.

My Fleeting Flirtation with TikTok

bittersweetnugget1 Comment

Like many people, I fell in love with comedian Sarah Cooper earlier this year. I wanted to easily find all her Donald Trump lip-syncing videos, and I heard she was posting them on TikTok, so I downloaded the app onto my phone.

Coincidentally, I had put myself in a social media “time-out” right before taking the plunge into TikTok. In quick succession, I had removed Facebook, then Instagram, and then Twitter from my phone. Each time I deleted an app, I found myself spending more time scrolling on whatever remained. I even took to scrolling on LinkedIn for a brief period! So, I’m sure you can guess what happened next.

First, when you download TikTok, the app asks you to check off what topics interest you. The subjects I selected seemed innocent enough, but the outcome was an endless stream of girls in bikinis doing identical dance routines.

This should have scared me off, and yet it didn’t. Fascinated, I scrolled and scrolled through videos of young women with seemingly perfect bodies, beautiful hair, and not half-bad dance moves. I started to feel bad about my own appearance, which is pretty stupid given the vast age difference between me and these video stars. Even the moms showing off their youthful good looks were at least a decade younger than me.

Disconcerting thoughts popped up: I’m pretty sure we didn’t have butts like that when I was a teenager! Was I ever that flexible or sexy? Could I get away with wearing an outfit like that at my age? And how come everyone lives in such a fancy, pristine house?

I had to remind myself that I was seeing these specific videos because they were among the most popular content on TikTok. Not everyone posting on the app looks or moves like that or has a closet full of trendy clothes.

The videos started playing in my head even when I wasn’t scrolling. Thus, after only a few weeks, I banished TikTok from my phone. Perhaps it was just a weird phase I went through in a relentlessly awful year.

Still, I’m mad at myself for falling prey once again to the idea that being “hot” is the ultimate achievement for women of all ages. For goodness’ sake, I worked at a feminist organization for 18 years and helped create content for a campaign promoting positive body images. Maybe that’s why I loved working on that project—because I was intimately familiar with the how the media exploit and even cultivate our personal insecurities.

Well into middle age, I haven’t really recovered from the sense that life would be better if I were more attractive. Instead, my fixations have simply shifted. Rather than hating on my big nose, my stubby legs, or my frizzy hair, now I’m more obsessed with my saggy neck, my stomach cellulite, or the gray in my hair.

As I try to escape this feeling of beauty inadequacy, the practices that work the best are spending less time looking in the mirror and waaaay less time scrolling through social media. When I’m moving my body as opposed to focusing on its reflection, I forget about my self-doubt.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still on social media—and Instagram is back on my phone. But these days I consciously concentrate on the accounts I have deemed worthy of my attention, and I do my best to avoid the content served up through ads or the search function.

My recommendation: Identify why and how you want to use social media and stay within those margins!