Sundaze 241: A Return to Storytelling and Reframing Sharing

Hello my loves!

It’s been a hot minute since I last checked in on here. Long story short, I was journalling one evening and ended up doing a little introversion about sharing or ‘the unshared’ and it drew me to just that: not sharing.

Sometimes, I just want to be offline.

Stepping back from my social media accounts has given me more (and better!) headspace to live for me, as I’d want to and do, without the limitations and microscopic glare of others. In my journal entry that day, I penned:

“A life lived through ‘my lens first and online’s never’ feels odd to propose, especially in this weird time of doing everything for Instagram or TikTok. But what is our life and sharing to these apps when we strip away trends and algorithms?”

This was reinforced by one of my friends one evening, who deactivated their social media accounts several months ago:

“I much prefer living my same life and days, and then having real, meaningful catch-ups with friends, like you, when we see each other or check in on WhatsApp. It feels more genuine.”

And I couldn’t have agreed more.

That night, we caught up over ice-cream and talked holidays, work, new-in clothing we’d bought, gym exercises we had each trialled (and given up on!). We talked for hours and the conversation felt full – no glossing over snippets she’d already seen on Instagram Stories or photo dumps of holidays. Instead, we returned back to an old-fashioned storytelling ritual, punctuated a little with scrolling through one another’s (phone) photo albums.

I learned a lot that evening.

As someone that has shared – and overshared, at that – their life online almost the entirety of their adulthood, I have rarely stepped back to consider its effects until now. These heart-filling, soul-quenching conversations and catch-ups are interactions that I had genuinely missed and that I don’t want to keep missing. Here’s to reframing how I share.

Love,

Michelle x

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