The one where I explain why I am here

And why I am scared of social media

If you’re an overthinker, welcome to a like-minded brain. I’ll warn you from the outset that I overthink everything. That sentence you just read, I thought about it for far too long. I probably rewrote it five times.

I wrestled so hard with the idea of starting this substack, I fear the outcome may already be bruised. My introverted personality and my extroverted typing fingers fought about writing for an audience, I spent so much time justifying why I should be allowed to write, I almost forgot the reason I wanted to do it. I love finding out how I think about things by putting ideas into writing and playing with them, I love that writing forces me think but it also enables me to think more clearly.

There was a time long ago when that’s what I did for a living. I had my own blog, I worked for a big online media platform, I wrote on Medium, for Huffington Post, for news outlets and realistically anyone that would have me. I studied the craft of writing, completed a Masters in Creative Writing, and wrote a lot of my thoughts on Facebook and Instagram.

Writing on the internet gave me community without having to leave the house. I thought I was happy sitting on the couch and living on social media. But more and more I’m finding those platforms… challenging.

It’s not just the algorithm or the fact that I have no interest in making video content. I’m not into TikTok trends and most of the time I find the writing on Insta stories too small to read. It’s more than that - social media is a bit of a dumpster fire. And I am afraid of fire. And dumpsters.

I used to love reading people’s updates, relating to stories, laughing at memes and following links to amazing places I may never have found. But now all I see is war. People who used to post about their meals and their kids now post about Middle Eastern politics, people who used to highlight current affairs want their followers to decide where they stand on policies and places they know nothing about. It’s not even informative, it’s just an echo chamber of people the algorithm thinks you want to read about. I used to be able to tell you what my friends were reading or interested in – now I can tell you how they feel about the situation in Gaza. It’s not a place where I want to hang out all the time. It literally feels unsafe.

I want to listen to people who have lived experience or broad knowledge. I just don’t want my news rammed down my throat by angry people on the internet copying and pasting their fear online.

There was a time I thought I needed to stay in the reality of other people’s live, that I had to feel their pain and acknowledge their suffering – as if somehow that would help them, and honestly, I still feel like that. But in the words of my husband, my doctor and my therapist, I know that feeling someone else’s pain does not take it away from them. Swimming in a sea of that pain does harm me – and most importantly the people around me.

And so, I am slowly venturing out of the maelstrom of social media and onto the calm waters of Substack (which ironically I will be posting on Facebook and Instagram). I hope you’ll join me.  Promise there will be a lot more book content and a lot less feeling guilty for having privilege content.