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10/16/2020 0 Comments on engagement + social mediait's been awhile. but fall and ushering in of winter (which happens a little too quick here in brockville, ontario IMO) beckons me to write down any thoughts, to document, to entertain my big feelings for a sec, to hopefully encourage you. it felt like my creativity was stunted the past few months. squeezed out of the room by more "pressing" matters, i.e. how to make money and how to establish a routine in a new place (thank you, st. lawrence river for being a steady companion in my floundering). it wasn't wrong. it was needed. but it did have me panicked. because if i wasn't sharing my deep thoughts on my blog or on IG, what the heck was i doing? who was i without it? what even was my creativity? who was i w/o the affirmation of the 3 people who read my blog? (oh yes, God and i talked a lottttt about my misplaced identity, thank you for asking. i'm a work in progress.) i became an angsty and irritable about all things social media. about all things sharing. thank you, ben (AND friends. AND family.), for listening to every one of my wild and rambling rants while i paced back and forth across the room at the foot of our bed mid-existential crisis. it's unnecessary to delve into every potentially harmful consequence of using social media and every beautiful and powerful thing about it. in my angst, (oh and i'm still not out of this mood btw #stillwrestling with how to engage the world via social media) the more i was reminded of how much we long to be seen, heard and understood. how much we long to know who we are. we're looking for God to tell us who we are because of who He is, but we look everywhere else instead. and the danger is (here i go again) in our pursuit of our God-given desire, we become clones of each other. we become obsessive over what each other has. and we get after those things. we grow in a deep (and dare i say unhealthy) admiration of strangers and of each other but it's consequence is only ever self-gratifying. we're soothed for a moment. then the incessant scrolling, searching, refreshing begins again. anxiety, discontentment, the pulling away of the present moment begins. oh, the irony of this post that i'll share on facebook, maybe IG, and every thread and twist of my inner struggle. don't worry, i'm aware. this isn't a warning. truly it's not. i needed to unravel my tangled thoughts in a blank google doc. and i figured i'd share in case any one feels the same. every time i have this conversation, i do walk away with one solid piece of self-advice: be intentional about how i engage. when i engage. who i engage. what i engage. how i engage. there's no one right way to be creative. we all fill our creative cups differently. for some, it's curating images. for others, it's decorating spaces. for others, it's scrapbooking. for others, it's writing (it me). lots more. well, this blog took an interesting turn. i wanted to write about the freedom to create or not create. how neither is right and neither is wrong. how every day, we can blow the top off creativity and instead of doing what "usually" fills our creative cup, we can infuse creativity in a conversation over the dinner table. over a game with our two-year-old. over an outfit choice. over meditating on scripture or a song. instead, i indulged in my rant. but it's good to get out. to straighten my spine. to say, yes, this is how i feel about it. cheers to intentional engagement + freedom, creativity in any form + boundaries.
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AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
October 2020
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