Today’s post was supposed to be something else.
It focused on the generational shift that everyone experiences in life, the passing of the torch as the parents generation takes the step back, allowing the next generation to take over, fulfilling the role of guardianship for whatever happens in this world next.
It’s inspiration came from the Bouncing Souls song Up to Us, which follows a similiar theme, as the like of Johnny Cash, Joe Strummer, Prince, David Bowie, leave this earth, they reflected
“Now we gotta keep on trying
Even though our heroes are dying
It’s up to us now
To make this fire never burn out”
It’s exciting and scary at the same time to feel that passing of responsibility, no longer should I expect, if I mess up, I can just go back to the parents to fall back on.
One great piece of writing advice is to write to towards one person – it can be a loved one, or an imagined person needing advice that you can give.
This was aimed at my wife, using the generational shift subject to talk about what we’ve been through together over the past six years, how things have changed, welcoming new life and saying goodbye to old.
It even contained references to conversations we had on long COVID nights, when we were determined to not descend into boxset madness.
Although deeply personal, I’m sure you, the reader would have related, but because of the personal nature I decided to not publish it because I felt the writing was something special for the person it was aimed at, putting it in the public domain would have killed it’s greatness.
But this got me thinking, how many great private, personal moments people have that are absolutley ruined, because they feel the need to share everything online.
Posting an announcement of an expected baby, complete with scan.
To capturing that exact moment on camera when you proposed.
These are deeply personal moments, drained at the expense of any integrity in exchange for likes.
In the online world…
In the online world we have become too quick to share every minute detail of what we are up to.
I always remember hearing about a Mayan belief that photographs, steal your soul, a belief I’m starting to buy into as I observe the biggest social media validation addicts, behind the Instagram profile, seeming soulless each day in the quest to be relevant.
The problem with social media is you start seeing the real world from the perspective of how it can boost your profile as an online influencer.
Your workouts becomes distracted as you spend more effort getting the perfect camera angle than putting intensity into your training.
As you experience life every thought makes you start composing that witty tweet in your head, but you just end up being distracted all the time, because no one is interesting enough to have something to say eight times a day.
Therefore, I challenge you…
A challenge I want to make to you, is think how you use the online world:
- Do I need to share images of everything I do?
- Does posting my political opinion about the latest current events matter?
- Can I spend more of my life treasuring the private moments, between friends, family, lovers, children?
- Does every piece of creativity need to be shared online or is there some artistic integrity keeping it restricted to an intimate offline audience?
Yes keep being creating, take pictures, write words, make videos.
But you don’t always need to share.
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Thanks
James
Perfect Manifesto
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while I post something every day, I am not a fan of sharing personal things that often. It’s one of the reasons I don’t use Instagram…
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Something I had in mind when I wrote this was gender reveal parties. There seems to be something fake about it as people put a show on for the camera. I take the attitude if your having a party to celebrate something the people you care about are there, do they really need to share a party I’ve not been invited to!
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I was also thinking about the gender reveal parties when I read your post. Particularly since one such party was blamed for starting one of the fires out in California…
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That’s crazy, was that fireworks?
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the term used was a “smoke-generating pyrotechnic device”…
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It’s a tightrope, indeed. Nice post
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Thank you!
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A wonderful post James, thought provoking, which ironically, I’ve just shared on Twitter!
I find self-promotion difficult, but necessary as I wish my songs to be heard from as wide an audience as possible, but often feel like apologising for asking people to listen. And I am so poor at Instagram and Twitter because as you say, trying to think of something new and witty to shout out above all the other social media noise is exhausting and takes away creativity from other areas.
But maybe that’s a different thing and I get your point, those intimate moments should, and in the past used to,remain just that, intimate and personal.
Paul
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Thanks Paul and thank you for sharing.
The balance between creating something then trying to increase exposure via social media is complex. Like you say it’s exhausting and often a lot of effort doesn’t get the intended outcome, which takes away time being able to create more new stuff.
Creating something beautiful to be enjoyed is one thing, but there is something quite false when someone shares a deeply personal moment grinning for the online audience.
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