Living in Third Person
Social media, mining our lives to feed the feed, and finding a way back to innocent mind
Wanna know something weird? Sometimes I catch myself mentally reformatting my life experiences in real time, as if I am creating a social media post in my head.
I don’t like admitting that but there it is, the truth. There is a tiny fraction of my mind, alert to possible images and thoughts that are visually appealing or inspirational, and opportunities to project the best version of my work and my practice. On the face of it, what’s wrong with that? I mean, we all want to put our best selves forward and show our best work, right? That’s just being human, and of course, as an artist, I want to do what I can to get my work seen in the world. But lately, it’s like having a surveillance camera mounted in my head, monitoring for things to capture, things to share, things to polish into a post. Sometimes it feels like social media has colonized my mind, and that an urge to leverage my daily experiences online has taken over.
Mining my life to feed the feed.
I didn’t always feel like this of course, and I wonder: short of quitting all social media, is there a way back to having an innocent mind? One that is present and kind of oblivious, one that does not continually view itself in third person? One whose thoughts are not tethered to potential value? One that forgets to monitor itself? I long for it.
I’m mostly thinking about social media here, but writing a blog probably does not make this any better (lol). But at least here I can write in depth about this self-conscious weirdness, and maybe you will write back with a comment because at the root of it all is still a desire for connection. The irony is thick, I know. Each of us hooked into the feed, looking for a signal in all of the noise.
Social media kicks my ass. It has become integral to the businesses and creative practices of almost every artist I know, myself included, and I often wonder about the price it extracts from us— what do we trade for presence and exposure there? I love the idea of connecting with people in my community or over long distances and it’s important to me to show up genuinely. Through social media I’ve made friends, found studios, sold work, gained exposure, and been deeply inspired by my fellow artists. So it has met so many of my real needs. But social media seems to emit a strong gravitational field, also pulling me toward its own needs. The more I resist it, the more I’m aware of the pull. I find myself needing to push harder and harder against an urge to polish and posture. Push back against the algorithm that shapes what I post or how frequently I post. Push back against “compare and despair”. Push back against the tension of repackaging myself. Even though I feel these pressures, I am not interested at all in the performative curation of myself as an artist. So I’m currently evaluating how much of this I’m willing or even able to do. I am trying to recalibrate, maybe finding a different way of relating to social media, one that is less invested, less performative, and less extractive. Because there is something in me, and I suspect in most of us, that is deeply exhausted by this third-person life.
I wish I knew exactly what that recalibration is, but I don’t, not yet. So I won’t try to wrap this post up neatly with a solution or offer a bit of wisdom or even a quote from someone who has thought about all of this more than I have. Maybe next time. I will probably be writing more about this as my thoughts unfold over the coming weeks or months. I think it’s enough, for today, to simply express this tension, this discomfort, this longing for a way back to simply being, a way back to an innocent mind. Instead of offering answers, I am currently just swimming in the questions.
You may (or may not) have noticed that I didn’t post last week. I was working on this post, and realized that I wanted more time to work on it… and that felt right. So I decided that I’d like to allow myself to publish when it feels right for me and for what I’m currently working on, more like when I used to write my old blog. I’ve found the weekly cadence here on Substack to be unsustainable as it cuts into my studio time, so instead I’m aiming to publish twice a month, with occasional extra posts when I have more to share.
Here’s to finding our inner cadence, one that supports our creative efforts 🥂🧡
Two things struck me as positive in this post: 1) expressing your discomfort - allowing imperfection and owning the questions; 2) leaning in to not strictly holding to a structure, ie posting a blog on a set timetable. I believe both these things help to cultivate the artist in oneself.
As always, thank you for offering these little gems. :)
I'm SO feeling the same pulls, Lisa as I bet so many creatives so. And yes, I DID NOTICE that you hadn't posted last week. ;)
I really look forward to your posts, but will be totally content if that's twice a month or whatever frequency/infrequency you find suits your flow.