Life on the other side of social media…
welcome to signs of life lab
My cursor was hovering over “delete my account” on IG for at least ten minutes while my mind raced. “I’m going to lose these "memories” forever.” “How am I going to find inspiration?” “I’m going to fall off the face of the planet and people are going to forget I exist.”
In that moment of crazed desperation it hit me: I was behaving like a total addict. The fact that I had become so controlled by something that didn’t exist 15 years ago was enough to scare me shitless. I took a deep breath and hit the damn button.
I deleted my apps at least twenty times, and always found myself thinking about them, wondering what I was missing out on. I always caved and re-downloaded them. Thats why I had to fully send it. Had to press delete. FOREVER.
I find that my friends are typically in one of two camps:
Camp progress. They are ADVOCATES for tech, believing wholeheartedly that it can be used for good. These friends work in tech, they read about progress on AI in their spare time, they love social media and will likely never ditch it. Some of these friends are the most thoughtful people I’ve ever encountered and they have an incredible capacity to experience life in a deep and meaningful way. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with being in the camp of progress.
Camp nostalgia. They crave a life before computers were in our pockets. They miss calling friends just to catch up. They wish they would stop watching people’s lives from their screens and start living their own. Social media doesn’t do it for them - and more than that, they find it diminishes their capacity for those human-to-human connections.
I myself fall into the camp of nostalgia. I want to write my friends letters, host dinner parties and game nights, walk outside and speak with a neighbor on the sidewalk, make eye contact with a stranger and let my mind wander about their life story.
Maybe you’re somewhere in the middle. Maybe you love social media and just want to get a handle on it.
Whether you’re curious about creating boundaries around socials, want to delete them and haven’t, or you’ve already taken the leap and just want to connect with others who are on a similar journey - Signs of Life Lab is for you.
What is signs of life lab?
This space will act as a guide. Need “analog hobby” ideas? Ways to become more connected to your body and self? Tips on how to shift your external validation needs to internal validation satisfaction? Silly things like book recs and recipes? I’ll be writing on a myriad of topics and collaborating with friends to bring you signs of life outside of my four walls.
This is also a time capsule of sorts - real time documentation of the experiment that is detaching from tech as our world moves toward it more and more. A messy diary with successes, failures, and lots of attempts at trying to figure this thing out.
Don’t be a stranger
What are your pain points/road blocks when thinking about deleting socials? If you’ve taken the leap, what are some of your success moments? Most embarrassing moments? My hope is that by sharing our collective stories, we would not only feel more connected, but that we would be able to help each other along the way.
