I remember a time when I was productive in my home life and my hobbies, both of which brought me great joy and validation.  What’s changed since then?  What’s happened to my output and my mental state?  Two things: Social media distraction and impostor syndrome.

Dealing with social media distraction has many gradients of severity and treatment, but being a member of Generation X gives me an advantage: Because I didn’t grow up with social media, it is easier for me to quit it cold turkey.  I’m going to gain back the time I waste on social media by cutting it out completely for several months, if not an entire year.  I might pop on once on a while to announce something, but it won’t be a daily check-up.  Back-of-the-napkin calculations suggest I will gain back at least 120 hours (that’s 5 days!) of free time per year giving up twitter and facebook alone.

Impostor Syndrome is possible to overcome if you can accept that you have provided real value at one or more points in your life.  If you accept that, there are various methods that can help.  I’ve adopted some, and they are indeed helping, such as keeping a file of nice things people have said about you, finding one person to confide in about feeling like a fraud, and — cliched as it is — “fake it ’til you make it”.  (If it’s good enough for Henry Rollins, it’s good enough to give it a shot.)

I want to get back to a time when I wasn’t worried about what people thought of me.  I want to feel like one of the smartest kids in the room again.  I want to will new things into existence because I feel they should exist and can help or entertain people.  Most importantly, I want to work on myself so that I am available for my family, and be mentally sound enough to not lose sight of how important that is.

To accomplish all this, I’ve removed all social media apps from my phone.  I’m also clearing out both of my email accounts, and being realistic about what I can and cannot accomplish for people.  (If I’ve volunteered to do something for you, I promise you’ll hear from me, but you might not like the answer.)  I might still be active on a forum or two, but with much less frequency.  If you need to contact me this year, please email me instead of trying to reach out to me over social media.

Self-improvement is a journey that requires a realistic world view and making some hard choices.  With sincere apologies to Johnny Marr and the late Kirsty MacColl:

No it’s not a pretty world out there
With people dying of their own despair
But in a written testimonial you’d say
You never really knew them anyway
I’ll never satisfy you
I’ll never even try to
I really couldn’t tell
It just depends what you remember
At the end of a perfect day