I’ve spent more than a year transitioning away from social media addiction, folding away Facebook newsfeeds and unfollowing everyone on Instagram, seeking a different pace and a new relationship to the ever-constant feed of other people’s lives.
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In November I transitioned jobs. My reasons for a job transition are still unclear to me, though I’m quite sure there are many. It seems, though, that the pace I was living at did not align with what my body and soul needed. It seems that there were energies that I needed to reconsider, recover, and reconstitute. It seems that I needed to step back instead of stepping forward.
I took quiet action and made a change.
Even as I made the transition, I felt a tiny tug (or a big tug, depending on the day) to be acknowledged. To be seen. To hear the roar of celebratory cheers. I spent time lurking on LinkedIn, gorging myself on the happy announcements of strangers, overhearing conversations about others’ success. My own decision and timing did not feel like it merited a big old Russian “Huzzah!”
For as much news goes around about social media addiction, very little attention is paid to LinkedIn. There is so much keeping up with the Joneses, everywhere. This trend is a constant theme throughout history, taking on different forms, always always morphing and melding into new variants and living within its hosts - we humans are built to look to the left and the right to see “am I doing this…. right?” This anxiety that builds up in me as I scroll through halls of local fame and pass by virtual celebrations is highly addictive, attempting to inform me with the intensity of the digital age of my ability to belong in this society.
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There’s a quieter voice inside of me. It says - your soul’s work cannot fit into LinkedIn.
It was the voice I listened to when I took my new job. It was the quiet voice I heeded when I entered a spiritual director training program. It is the whisper that becomes louder when my feet are on a trail in the middle of the woods, when I am hearing a perfect harmony, and when I am attending to the murmurs of Love inside me.
This voice becomes quieter when I lurk the many splendored halls of LinkedIn, when I traipse through the dressed-up rooms on Instagram, and when I compare-compare-compare my accomplishments to the accomplishments of my peers.
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So, I am seeking ways to feed the voice. To step away from the clanking of the champagne glasses and sit with my neighbors on the pot-holed roads of Atlanta. I like to think about how we all had a different day, a so-so day or a brilliant day or an utterly defeating day. I like to think that these days outweigh the celebratory days. That our soul is thriving in the moments between the potholes and the champagne, in between the cars on the surface roads of this southern city, when you walk with your bedhead and your doubts and your joys and your soul, when I drive with my concerns and my delights and my deepest regrets. Here we are, walking this path on the same dirt, finding a way forward.