Slim’s Diary: Social Media V. Print Media and Screen Media
I know a million other people must’ve made a new year’s resolution that included putting their phones down. However, how you leave something is how you enter something (do not quote me on that cause it’s not my quote). So, I have been attempting to pull away from social media since the beginning of December in an effort to find my love for writing again. “What do you mean by find it again?” Yeah, I’m not feeling very ‘Believe in yourself’ right now. I know I’m a hypocrite because I’m the first to tell someone to do that for themselves. Easier said than done, I guess. In fact, I don’t think a day has gone by in 2024 where I didn’t seriously consider putting down the pen for good. The only reason why I haven’t is ‘cause some small part of me knows I’m exactly where I belong. If I’m where I belong, then why do I feel like a stranger in a house I built/ am in the process of building?
First problem: What was I supposed to do if I wasn’t doom scrolling on tik tok or watching everyone else fly by me on Instagram? Wait, rewind. Take a wild quess at how many hours a day (out of 24 hours) I spent on tik tok.
TEN MOTHER LOVIN HOURS!
I wanted to throw up. That was quite disturbing! I know I brought this up in my newsletter but I can’t get over that number. Matter fact, that number is what’s keeping me motivated to get the heck up off of social media more often. The first thought I had afterwards was, how many books could I have read in 10 hours? I can read maybe 100 pages in 2 hours tops. Meaning, after all that mathematical stuff I could’ve read at least one 500-page book with those 10 hours.
Not only that but, reading is the reason why I started writing. Anytime I was uninspired before, I read. That wasn’t working as it usually was, that’s why I decided social media had to be the problem, especially because I felt that looming guilt one gets after relapsing on an addiction they had.
Ever since then all I did was prove that idea to be accurate. I am very addicted to social media even when it’s killing he best parts of me. Social media is my version of a phat blunt, I guess. Technically it’s not bad for you, it could even be helpful! But it gets to a point…
I know it was killing the best parts of me because I compare myself to every. single. writer. It was to the point where I couldn’t read anything because the only thing going through my mind was “damn you’re ass at this”. Granted there’s other things at play that made me feel awful, but that constant comparison was complicit in it.
While I was slumping and wandering off the cliffs of overthinking, I was also watching movies like Wicked and Reading the An Ember in the Ashes series. Then, I told myself this: Other pieces of creative media has given me something, all social media was doing was reminding me of what I don’t have. I got lost in the pools of my neighbor’s backyards.
You want to know what learned in the past month alone though?
Social media is literally a drug. I know I know ‘People said this already’. Well I ain’t believe that ‘til I felt it and I in fact felt it every time my brain was begging for the phone as I picked up a book. “I’m not addicted to social media” is the equivalent of saying you’re not addicted to a substance and rambling about how you could get off it when you want when it’s really not that easy. HOWEVER, it’s also a wonderful tool that has helped me and many others achieve success in field we otherwise wouldn’t have a made a dent in without social medias help. SPECIFICALLY Tiktok. (Please don’t leave us). Anything you overconsume can be a drug and social media is a fine line to walk with all of this in consideration.
Books, Movies, and Tv shows are inspiring if you let them be and of course depending on how you experience said media. Reading The Ember in The Ashes Series literally woke up a part of me that had went dormant for a long time. The part of me that was a teenage girl laying in bed all day, reading a book. However, the ‘you should quit writing, if you can’t write like this voices’ were very loud as I was reading this.
A while back, I had learned that some thoughts won’t disappear, but it helps if you replace them. So instead, I treated reading like one of my college courses and Sabaa Tahir was my professor. All of a sudden ‘not good enough’ became a search for similarities that were really seeds of ideas that just needed some sunlight from inspiration. I am also not Sabaa Tahir. I’m Slim. I’m Tiana. But that’s another post because I could go on and on about things that are unique to my voice and why I can’t let comparison steal my colors.
I don’t know why I wrote this, this way. I wanted to be the flowery, pretentious, dense, big brain writer. But as I’m sitting here and typing I realized something. One of the reasons why I felt bad about my work was ‘cause I was comparing myself to people who are simply not on my wavelength, which is fine. In fact, that’s a beautiful thing to marvel at when you take a step back. But I’ve read so many books lately of successful authors who are like me. It damn near brings a tear to my eye (don’t tell anyone I said that) to put the ‘Never smart enough’ voices to rest so that I would realize that I am possible. I gotta be on social media less so that doesn’t become a faded memory again. I don’t fit in with the pieces of a Mosiac I didn’t belong to in the first place.
Maybe I’m not a mosaic piece…
I’m the whole F’n picture and we are the museum.