Friday, July 12, 2019

The End of (Over) Sharing


I've been writing on this space for over six years, and in that time, I have always struggled with the "personal" aspect of blogging. Throwing together words and photos for summaries of vacations or days off? Easy. Finding the words to share personal details without compromising privacy? Significantly harder. It's something I've continually fought, alternating between sharing because ~that's what bloggers do~ and writing it off completely as invasive and unnecessary.

As my unease at sharing personal details on the internet grew, I also stopped sharing on social media. I deleted my Twitter and Facebook accounts at the end of last year and haven't regretted it for a second. I've deactivated my Instagram account for the month of July, and to my own surprise I've barely noticed its absence. I wanted to reclaim moments for myself, to do things without sharing them with others. Nearly every time I pulled out my phone to add something to Instagram I thought, "Why am I sharing this? Does it really need to be shared?" and the answer was almost always no. And while I likely won't permanently delete it, I only foresee myself using it occasionally going forward.

My relationship with this space and blogging in general has changed too. Where I once used this blog as the primary way to document my life, I now use it as a last resort. I don't intend to delete it completely. I like having a carved out space that's solely mine, where I can post to whenever I want to with no overall purpose. But at the same time, I won't be sharing as many personal details as before. No more monthly roundups or essays or summaries about my life. Those that need to keep up with my everyday life are the ones already in my everyday life. And on a related note: I saved the majority of old posts to an offline journaling app and deleted nearly 85% of the posts on this site. What was at one point an archive of nearly 300 posts is now down to a scant 40. I've kept the bare bones public but have archived everything private.

I'm not walking away completely, but I'm letting in bigger gaps between posts, with no pressure on myself to post what's going on. This blog functioned well as a creative outlet during college, but my current chapter of life is less wildly up and down, and therefore less easily transferable to the blogosphere. Maybe in the future I'll return more frequently, but for now, I'm giving it longer periods of silence.
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