If there’s one thing that the past few years has taught me, a thing that 2022 especially ground into me, is that I feel so done with social media. At least, the way I’ve been using it. Twitter specifically is the main villain at play. I barely use Facebook, Instagram stresses me out to look at so I don’t, anything outside of these three I’ve mostly conquered and banished. But Twitter…cursed be thy wretched name.
It’s slowly drained me over time to keep in mind that a random thought I set-and-forget on Twitter will reach hundreds of eyes, and potentially be shared out to invite arguments over misinterpretations that I just don’t have the willpower to engage with. On the one hand, working through multiple layers of “How could this be taken or twisted? Is this worth putting out there?” is great for refining some thoughts or seeing if they’re worth anyone’s time to share at all. On the other hand, being someone who uploads videos to an even larger audience of people on YouTube, and who streams to Twitch where the name of the game is to have fun with a ticking live viewer count akin to a bomb over your head at every moment…I do too much self-auditing already. Analytics and consideration of how what I say is affecting them and affecting someone else is already too large a part of my life. For all that pressure, plus every Tweet being an opportunity for someone to take something the wrong way and instantly develop a negative first impression of you…it’s an exhausting platform even without delving into the new manager that stepped in recently.
Putting aside all of that spiel, though. I simply lean on it too much to fill voids in my days. 2022 has also granted me intense awareness that if I don’t have ADHD like I suspect I do, I sure struggle with a lot of the challenges that those who have it contend with. Twitter scrolling is my go-to when I need to fill a few minutes, and more often than that it definitely enables executive dysfunction, or at least some behavior of mine similar to it (I really try not to self-diagnose, the terminology is cautiously used here as easy reference points). It’s so easy to tug at Twitter’s slot machine repeatedly until it dispenses more dopamine, and for all the time I find myself doing that, rarely does it afford me positive feelings in kind. In 2023 I want to face the fact that I simply allow myself too much time to look at it. I want to channel my inclination to consider what I say and reroute it to something that feels more positive.
It’s no secret that in 2022 I didn’t get a lot done online, nowhere near the amount I wanted to. It snowballed and burdened me most of the day, every single day, that I couldn’t bring myself to begin or finish projects I had passion for. To what’s certainly an unhealthy degree, these limitations I still don’t quite understand were the albatross around my neck, dominating even the moments I tried to give myself to relax and recuperate. I don’t want to feel this way a year from now when I look back on 2023.
I have spent the last few weeks trying to reframe myself mentally, and one of the decisions I have landed on is that I need to make myself write more. One of my biggest inhibitors is that it’s so hard for me to start anything. External pressures are (unfortunately) one of my biggest motivators, so publicly committing to writing a column at least once a month will hopefully get me in a more rewarding place. I want to be able to look back in a year and see at least 12 written entries on this Substack. I want a place to be a bit more vulnerable, to write about whatever lights up my mind that month. If that month it’s about how I think Koki is the best Digimon artist, and not many people know or care what I’m on about, so be it. I want that freedom without the urge to see if people “Liked” it afterward to agree with me, hoping for numbers to hit some unquantifiable “metric” my subconscious has deemed worthwhile.
Lastly, I want to get out in front of myself and afford future me some forgiveness. In the possible event that this desire to write monthly is just a novelty that will fade for me, like so many other interests lately. Things come and go for me, often they return, but I can’t control when or for how long. It’s what’s broken me the most in 2022. Is anything I feel genuine on a fundamental level, or is it the latest fad to juice up my mind before being discarded randomly? I so long for the days that I would tell myself I’d do a thing and then just do it. So, if I write three posts and toss this to the side, know that I’m still working through how to operate.
So that’s my diatribe of how I engage with things I shouldn’t, and how I yearn to engage with things I just can’t seem to. Hopefully I can flip that script some in 2023. I’ll try to keep each post as earnest and from the heart as this one. I want to find a “voice” again with my writing, to keep the rust off. You will still see me on Twitter, and if you don’t want these posts e-mailed to you, I will be sharing them over there (I do not blame you, I try to receive as few e-mails as possible). My next post will be up in a couple of weeks. So yeah. I have a Substack now.
Thank you for taking the time to read what I’ve written and thank you for supporting me across other platforms and mediums if you do. I’m a miserably rusty writer and I appreciate your patience if my style is clumsy. If you’d like to find me elsewhere online:
Where to support me.
My Patreon is the best place to leave a tip or provide ongoing support. Out of every platform the cut that they give to their creators is the highest, so your dollars go the farthest there.
Video Content.
FTCR, my group game commentary channel
Lol this did not work out oops