Silenced

I love dragonflies. This is a fairly recent development.

When Presley was born he went straight to special care. The name label on his incubator was decorated with a dragonfly sticker. I now own many items with a dragonfly motif. Something bad will happen if I don't keep collecting dragonflies. It's his talisman. His animal spirit. What a load of nonsense. I don't really believe that, I'm just a sentimental soul who likes to shop.

I'm also strangely enjoying tapping away at my laptop right now. I haven't been able to write for a while. I've been very busy. It's not only that that has kept me away from my blog. I feel trapped by Google.

I order birthday presents for the boys, forgetting to use an incognito window, and I spent the next week hastily closing tabs when ads for those presents pop up. I look at a handbag, but it's too expensive. I see sense and decide not to buy it. I spend the next week being tormented by that bag on every website. Don't even get me started on how Facebook has changed so I can't see what I want to see, or the way no one talks on Twitter, only broadcasts, or how you're supposed to use 12 filters and 47 hashtags on Instagram. I've digressed. I'm sorry, but ARGH.

My Blogger blog is linked to G+ - I have no idea why, it's a colossal waste of time, but I've had 1.5m views, so I can't bin it, can I? G+ is linked to my Gmail account. I use my Gmail account for work, for school, for real life friends and acquaintances. I noticed recently that Google had started calling me Sandy Calico when I send an email. Now it's out there I can't force people to forget they ever saw that name. Now people I know through work, school and elsewhere all know about my blog. I'm assuming now that they all wondered who Sandy Calico was and Googled me. They know things about me that I wouldn't have necessarily shared with them in real life.

There is so much that I need to say. I need to dump some of the thoughts churning around in my mind. Some of them keep me awake at night. Some haunt me in the daytime.  It would certainly help me, and I feel it may help others, if I write about my struggles with food, for instance, but how can I when I know who is reading? Everything is muddled, when it should be compartmentalised. I want all the people I know to stay in the little boxes I put them in. If I want to let someone out of their box, that should be my choice.

Imagine a Venn diagram of people who know me by my real name and people I don't mind knowing my pseudonym. It should be up to me to put them in the intersection.

I can't be bothered to start a new, anonymous blog. I don't have it in me to build up another 'brand'. Incidentally every blogger having to be their own brand and competing with each other has pretty much killed the blogging community (in my opinion). Now it's all about links and promotion, there's nothing natural or pure about it. Yes, I'm digressing. I'm not sorry about that.

I'd like to unravel the internet and start it again.

This is my space and I don't feel comfortable here anymore.



You may also like to read:
What is the point of social media? Written in Jan 2012, it's still how I feel.

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Silenced

Anti Social Media

Enjoy this blast from the past while you're reading. All will become clear...




Over the summer holidays I unplugged. This post about turning off electronic devices and spending summer outdoors struck a chord with a lot of people. It was picked up by Child Psychiatry UK and was also Netmums' Blog of the Week.

We did have a good summer. The boys enjoyed soccer camp. We had days out at Gullivers, the Milton Keynes beach, Pirate Golf, soft play, local parks and friends' houses. We had a jolly week in Hunstanton and spent a very long, very full, weekend at my in laws. We saw my mum too. We celebrated birthdays. We got new shoes. Okay, that last bit wasn't fun, but you get the idea. We were busy. We got plenty of fresh air. I took my book into the garden, not my phone. I only did a tiny bit of work in the evenings.

Now the boys are back at school - Year 2, oh my - I have time to get back to my online life. I'm finding it difficult to come back. That first tweet, that first Facebook update, that first Instagram felt difficult. Does anyone else feel slightly uncomfortable after a social media break? Joining back in is a little daunting.

When I was young, the end of the summer holidays was signified by the arrival of the fair on our village park. My brother and I would watch from our bedroom window as the the waltzer and the dodgems arrived on the backs of brightly painted trucks. We'd shout down to Mum with minute by minute updates. We'd go back to school on the Wednesday and the fair opened that night. We'd go for a look round then, to see what was there. We would usually go properly on the Thursday night, holding a handful of 10 pence pieces. I can smell the onions cooking, see the red, blue, orange, green and yellow flashing light bulbs, feel the force of the rickety rides and hear 'Feels Like I'm in Love' by Kelly Marie, like it's yesterday. We'd come home with our friends, holding a half-dead goldfish, a battered bag of candy floss and a half-eaten toffee apple.

Now the end of summer is marked by a back to school blaze of photographs of children in their too big school jumpers, stood outside front doors. Pinterest is full of autumn crafts, Halloween nonsense, bonfire toffee recipes and Christmas, Christmas, Christmas. And don't get me started on the Ice Bucket Challenge. It's all a bit too look at me in your face for me (apart from the back to school photographs, I love those).

Last year September to December flew by as I fitted in preparing for my family Christmas, with PTA duties and my freelance work. It's a busy time, but I want to enjoy the run up to Christmas this year. I want to have time to decorate the house, make cards, decorations, wreaths and gingerbread houses without feeling like I'm up against it all the time, like it's a chore, a job to get ticked off the endless to do list. Something has to give, and I now know what it is. My online life.

A couple of years ago I wrote a post called What is the Point of Social Media? Revisiting it today I realise that I still feel that way. I'm not that active online, although I can spend hours quietly nosing around blogs and bloggers, news websites and Pinterest. I often feel like this is wasted time, when I could be more productive. Perhaps it's time to keep the laptop closed more often and for longer?

Is is just me? Am I just being anti-social?

Do you have the balance right? I'd love to know how you do it.



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Anti Social Media

Unplugged

I remember my summer holidays in the 1970's. The days were long and sunny. We called for our friends and had adventures in the woods. We found monster caterpillars. We made camps in the garden, we played Mummies and Daddies (there were a few kisses, but it was very innocent).

We rode our bikes around the village. We went to the park. We swung as high as we dared and jumped off onto the dirt. We all clung to the bright orange seesaw, trying to bump everyone else off. Our hands smelled of the metal of the climbing frame. We sat under the trees and collected beech nuts. We played in the grass cuttings.

We went to The Dump, but avoided the old mattresses so we didn't get fleas. We made dens in the hedgerows. We descended on our mums in rotation, and scrounged ice pops and iced Ribena. We came home for lunch and tea. No one wore a watch. No one had a mobile phone.

How I would love my children to experience that kind of summer. To have that much freedom.

The closest my boys get to having adventures is when they find a corner of our secure garden and start digging in the mud. I sometimes let them walk to the post box together. They are out of my sight for twenty long seconds.

Play dates are arranged. The wide school catchment area means that we usually drive to friends' houses. We also arrange to meet in the local park and take a picnic. We walk there and I love letting the boys run across the field to get to the pirate ship. I follow behind, watching them like a hawk.

In these fearful times, where everyone is a potential child snatcher, I just can't let go. I can't give them the freedom they need to learn to play, to look out for one another and be responsible. They are still only six and five. Maybe in a couple of years I will feel more confident and give the the chance to blossom.

Until then I need to give them the best, most fun summer holiday experience I can. This means keeping the laptop closed. I'm switching off for the summer, at least during the day. I don't want my children to remember their summer holidays as mum sitting at the laptop and them glued to electronic devices (as much as they love Mario, Luigi, Yoshi and the gang).

I want us to go out and get hot playing football, cricket, badminton and golf. I want us to walk, run and cycle. I want us to eat picnics, hide in the long grass and find banks to roll down.

If I ignore you on social media, it's not personal. It's not you, it's me. I want to live life unplugged this summer.



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Unplugged

What is the Point of Social Media?

Oh how the world has changed in just a few short years.

In January 2009 I had an old fashioned mobile phone and sent a few texts. I sent the odd email too. I used Amazon and Ocado, but did little else online on my old PC. I had no idea what a blog was. My children were 16 months and 4 months old. I was a stay at home mum and I spent my days chasing my tail. We walked to the shops most days, with Presley in a pushchair and Cash in a sling. I sat with my babies as I fed and played with them.

Skip forward to January 2012 and some things are still the same. I use my old-fashioned mobile phone to send a few texts. I send the odd personal email. I shop online, not just at Amazon and Ocado, but elsewhere on the internet for toys, clothes, electrical appliances and things I don’t really need from Lakeland. I'm still a stay at home mum. My children are now 4 and 3 years old and attend nursery for 15 hours per week. We walk to the shops and the park. I sit with my children at mealtimes and play referee when they fight over toys.

The big change in my life is social media. I have a smartphone and a laptop. I’m a member of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, many forums and Blogger. I have over 500 blogs in my Google Reader.  I play Words With Friends.

I could, if I chose to, spend all day every day flitting around in my online life. Is social media a hobby, that can be put aside, or is it something more?

How did we keep in touch with our real-life friends before Facebook? Now we read their status updates and click ‘like’ or comment with a ‘dislike’ as appropriate, but are we really in touch with them or is Facebook a poor substitute for friendship? When did we last chat on the phone or meet up in person? And don’t get me started on Facebook’s appaling privacy record…

I sometimes find it bizarre that people tweet about the most personal of events. They ‘live-tweet’ births, deaths, accidents and relationship break-ups. It just seems a bit… needy to me. Are we all just attention-seekers looking for some kind of validation by telling the world that we’ve just thrown up, or that there are only thirteen sleeps until our holiday or that we’ve written an unmissable blog post?

Does a tree really fall in a forest if there’s no one there to Twitpic it and tweet ‘Timber LOL’?

Of course Twitter can be wonderful if you need advice. I have made some genuine real-life friends through Twitter and hopefully I have other friends there that I haven’t met yet, but I often feel like I’m wasting my precious spare time tweeting and chatting when I could be writing or learning to sew or even – yes, really – cleaning the house. Perhaps I don’t value these friendships as much as I should? I see other online friends chatting happily together every day and I feel left out. I wonder if I need to participate more. I wonder if they see me as their friend even though I don’t tweet daily. Can you have real friends in social media without that time commitment or is it a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’?

I am incredibly nosy, that’s why I love reading blogs and looking at people’s photographs. I tend to lurk online more than participate (sometimes I simply don't have anything interesting to say) and I notice that some people seem to be online all day every day. Even Christmas Day. Surely this is the one day of the year when the online world should pale into insignificance as you spend time with your family. Live. Be in the moment. Step outside the social media bubble. Catch up with your online buddies another time.

I did an experiment over the holidays. I didn’t post anywhere online for 9 whole days. I spent time with my family. It was possibly made more special and private because I didn’t tweet about it. If I had told you that I made the best Christmas lunch ever (which I did), would you really care? I don’t think so. It would have been amusing to tweet that my mum bought me a meat thermometer for Christmas. You could have replied ‘I think she’s worried about the turkey ROFL’, but it would have taken both of us away from our children. I want to remember the look of wonder on Presley’s face when he came into our bedroom with his stocking on Christmas morning. He was too excited to speak. I’d have missed that if I had my phone in front of my face, jabbing away typing ‘7am and I’m the only one awake LMAO’.

I guess, as with most things in life, balance is everything. I sometimes think that life was simpler before social media. Perhaps I’m just being anti-social.

What do you think? Do we spend far too long online or is our real life online now? How do you get the balance right for you?

What is the Point of Social Media?