(preface: I have a social network addiction)

 

This past week I decided to go on a social network cleanse. Simple reason, my spirit is in a rift and I can’t figure it out. The few things that I did know were; I was highly irritable, I was catting off being the writer I desired to be, and being overexposed to life occurring on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, I was starting to care about the things that held no valuable or meaningful significance to me; it was just a bunch of ego’s flaunting and overcompensating their insecurities on the WWW on top of the frustratingly skewed perspectives.  It was causing me to lose faith in the future of humanity, and that’s what I don’t need right now. I need to believe in the future for my nephews, nieces and my one day caps2.0’s.

I’ve always enjoyed the process of a detox because if you’re in tuned with who you are, you can identify certain causes & effects to your body and mind.  As a professional troubleshooter, a simple methodology to find the root cause of an issue is to unplug/strip everything down to the barebones then work your way back up and reconnect one thing at a time until you to identify the issue.

(I frequently use concepts of spirit/soul vs ego to differentiate serving a greater good vs serving myself)

This rift I’ve been experiencing became apparent to me two months ago. I posted a pic on Instagram boasting about some basic shit when one of my mentors (by the way, everyone should have at least 2-3 mentors/elders in their life…friends are cool but at the end of the day, we’re all still trying to figure it out), commented on it. These three words, short & simple (word to Stevie) served as a catalyst for this detox… “What’s the purpose?”

One of the perennial questions I learned to ask myself when I talk to myself (yes, I talk to myself frequently, and we have an amazing love/hate relationship lol) is “what is the purpose?” for anything that I do. Whenever I pose that question to myself, I can identify if the purpose serves my soul or my ego. Ideally, I’d prefer to operate at a frequency that is predominantly satisfying to the soul, but like most humans (especially Americans), I tend to live by the ego.

But I digress.

Back to this rift.

Since I began this social network detox I have been able to identify a few factors causing the rift in my spirit. One is assuming leadership people expect of me. I know I have the qualities to lead at some capacity as well as fulfilling the expectations my elders, my peers, and the younger generation that may look up to me. As I connect the dots of my life, I’ve inadvertently been groomed to be a leader since middle school from all my extra-curricular activities, military/combat experience, but most importantly from being the man of the house for my mom & younger sister. Couple these opportunities with a life full of overcoming adversity and my positive disposition through it all, it should be of no surprise to me that people expect greater things from me. Yet, I only relish in it when convenient, never when it’s the standard/expectancy. But as I reach the tender age of Jesus, I know that my Saturn’s Return (google it if you want to learn more about astrology – but the gist of it is the life has cycles of maturity & structure) is coming to an end and my purpose is banging at the door.

Secondly, my fear/reluctance to write. I love to write but I’m afraid of my own criticism. I used to write years ago when I was in my 20’s. It was my therapeutic tool to learn about myself & vulnerability. But as I started climbing the scholarly ladder and I learned about more complex writing structures, I felt my style of writing was premature and lacked structure in comparison to the literary greats, making my writings look like child’s play. As the years progressed though, I’ve gotten lots of support and requests to write from peers that I deem literary greats of my generation.

8 days into this social network detox I also realized I allowed my obsessive observation of trends on microblogging social networks to distract me. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram permit me to provide quick CliffsNotes style, typically 140 character blurbs, of my assessments of things I see online or in person. I was cheating myself by compartmentalizing my thoughts between the 3 networks, just to exercise a multi-tasking thought process.

To overview the recent thoughts, there’s nothing wrong with social networks mainly when used in moderation and as a proper tool. I overwhelmed myself due to constantly being on the networks for the satisfaction of boredom & ego, overexposing me to the cultivation/celebration/concernment of ignorance and the bombardment of oversharing.

My goal was to re-find my purpose on social networks and remain focused on that purpose. Currently, I believe that purpose is to provide an additional voice of reason to balance and counter ignorance since “I know better”.

MLK once said “History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

 

A few more observations are:

• I rarely think of my associates;
• I don’t think about sex, partying, drinking as much (the Network world is hypersexualized);
• I don’t feel compelled to be a social firefly;
• I’m not as influenced by the thoughts of others;
• I feel completely irrelevant (and it feels good!!);
• I enjoy saying “I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about” when someone asks me if I saw something on the Networks;
• I miss sharing pics and music with the world;
• I have more of a desire to write;

 

And that sums up my experience thus far.

I’ll leave you with a quote that could’ve easily replaced this wordy ass post lol
“It’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once and it’s too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst, and then I remember to relax and stop trying to hold on to it and it flows through me like rain and I can feel nothing but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid, little life. You have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m sure, but don’t worry. You will someday.”

Lester Burnham from American Beauty