Logging off

Pulling the cord on social media

This is not my cat but I hope they’re well

I’m getting off Instagram.

The dumb thing is, I already did this once before. Back in 2022, I logged off and gladly closed the door behind me. It was so blissfully quiet on the other side. Slowly the overworked soil of my attention came back to life. Life was pretty okay.

It wasn’t until I moved away from my established community and settled in Nottingham that I came back to the scroll. I told myself I needed to find my people, find what’s good. I fell for the smoke and mirrors story. You know the one that says social media is all about connection, when we all can see it’s built to make Zuck et al unfathomably rich from the attention economy.

And now?

I’m done. I want back in on the blissful quiet.

I’m experiencing a deep pull to know less. To consume less. To wonder more and spend time in the uncertainty, figuring things out for myself. Feeling my way from what I experience to be true, rather than what everyone else in my little algo-bubble says. I want to slow down. Be in the unknown, be in the local. Let things unfold and remove the urgency. I want to connect more deeply, not more widely.

I can feel my precious attention being siphoned off for the cheap reward of a momentary dopamine hit. I miss being able to think my own thoughts. I want time to let something brew without rushing to share publicly. I’m sick of the cacophony of other people’s opinions in my head, and the work it takes to shuffle down through the noise.

I’m done with the way overstimulation disconnects me from my body. I’m done with the skin-too-tight directionless urgency that social media creates in my system. I’m done with the numb doom scroll that leaves me flat and powerless in the face of the horrors.

I’m done with running my business on social media, the strangling constriction that I feel around ‘making content’ to feed the noise machine. I’m done with the scratchy cognitive dissonance of knowing that the type of work I want to do (slow, connective, embodied, present) is in direct opposition to what these platforms cultivate.

Staying on social media has been a bodily no for a long while now. I tried to fight against it and make it work but the truth is the truth. And so I’m out.

I’m scared I’ll lose touch with people if it’s not ‘easy’ to contact me. I’m scared I’ll lose all my clients or never attract a new one again, and I’ll be broke. I’m scared I’ll be out of the loop, that by leaving I’m somehow abdicating my responsibilities to know what’s happening in our troubled world. I’m scared I’m going to be judged, or that folks will think I’m judging them. I’m scared because I’ve been fucking around on there for over a decade and doing something different requires consciously choosing to act differently. Change is scary for a body, even if it’s the right thing.

I’ll miss the memes and silliness. I’ll miss the glimpses into people’s lives - the shining flashes of what delighted, amused, inspired. The amazing work of artists I’d never cross paths with without the internet as a conduit. I’ll miss discovering random books and music. I’ll miss the moments that someone’s words cut through me like a knife and give language to an experience I couldn’t describe.

I’m trusting that can be found elsewhere. Somewhere slower, more human-paced. There is change, yes, things falling away, but maybe it’s not all loss. Maybe we get to create a different way. I hope so. I hope that just because this is familiar doesn’t mean it needs to continue. I hope that for a lot of the way that the world is structured right now.

So that’s where I am right now. Feeling this new landscape out and finding my way. Wondering about how this will reshape my business. Enjoying the feeling of coming back to centre in the blissful quiet.

I’m really curious about your current experience of social media. How is it feeling in your system? And does Substack feel like social media to you? I’m still not sure on that for me yet.

What’s on:

One-to-One
I rewrote my sales page recently, and I just have to say that if you’re bored of numb, sick and exhausted being your normal you should have a look.

Studio Dreamland
The Practice - our monthly workshop of breathwork and somatics - is happening Thursday 12th. This one is all about finding Magic in the Overlap, attuning to the interconnection between you and everything so you can lean into the support of something bigger than yourself.

Plus if you join by Thursday you’ll be in time for the mail out of The Anchor - our monthly (snail mail) guide to navigating the energies of the upcoming astrological season. Yay for cute mail!

Snippets and bits:

• There’s a decaying shark in a leaking tank of formaldehyde in an abandoned theme park somewhere on the outskirts of Melbourne and I just wanted you to know that

• I don’t know where it came from but earlier this week I found myself watching the masterpiece that is the video for Nasty by Janet Jackson, thinking about this very silly comic by Hark! A Vagrant

• You know I can’t get enough of The Emerald podcast. Let Us Sing of the Syncretic Gods of Outcasts and Wanderers not only has the best title for a podcast episode ever but was also a salve to my spirit

• There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak entirely consumed me and I can’t recommend it highly enough. A tale of three lives woven together across time and space by water and story

• I went straight from the watery adventures of the above into Naomi Klein’s Döppelganger. I was a No Logo devotee in the 00’s (the seeds of my anti-capitalism run deep) and I’m so into this new exploration of the way online culture is warping our understanding of ourselves and the world

• Are you, like me, an absolute sucker for an old photo? Do you enjoy some gentle sleuthing? Timeguessr — an online game where you try to locate the time an place a photo was taken — might be the perfect doom scroll substitute for you

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This is Body Magic, a letter on embodiment, liberation, and magic.

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