Should I start a blog

 I understand the irony of this, but bear with me for a second.

Two weeks ago I cried in therapy finally admitting that I do, in fact, have a lifelong dream I want to pursue. Guess what it is? Anyone who has known me for a while will probably be unsurprised to hear- I want to be a writer. I want to be the person who gets to just sit at home in sweatpants and work on their book all day. I miss the creative process. I am so, so afraid of this, but it's been big to admit that it's what I want.

So, y'know. Being in a PhD program for cancer research seems like an odd place to have ended up. It's okay, because I'm also good at this and there is some genuine interest on my part, but it feels like the reason I got here was a combination of "smart kids do science" + "this is at least somewhat interesting" + "knowing this makes me feel smart, which feels good" + "I'm not terrible at this; in fact, I may actually have a bit of a knack for it." But none of those is "I feel a genuine passion for this" or "I like the style of work I have and the hours I'm able to keep" (well, maybe a little, but I do still wish I didn't have to go in at 6:30 AM due to booking issues- a classic catch-22 of people who are there at normal hours get first dibs on subsequent days of normal hours) or "I can see myself doing this for a long time" (the thought of that gives me a fair amount of anxiety). I think those are maybe important factors. Not to mention the more personal and subjective "I'd like to have a little more flexibility on where I can live" and "I like working at home infinitely more than I like having to be around people all the time."

So... what does this have to do with the blog? Maybe that's not necessary, since it's pretty obvious that a blog is about writing. But writing about what?

Well, since I've scaled back on my social media usage, I've found that there's actually a lot of creative energy in my brain. I've even opened a couple of documents on my computer solely for just writing out ideas and thoughts, including an entire course I outlined in my head (it's about teaching scientific writing and basic research, which I feel deserves its own course at this point). I started planning my story again. Turns out when you stop consuming endless fields of images and videos and other people's lives, you have more time and energy to create instead.

Here's the thing though: I'm scared.

Scared that if I pursue this, it will be a big failure.

Scared that I'll have a good idea, fail to protect it, and someone else will steal it and profit from it.

Scared of putting myself out there and being criticized, fairly or not (part of scaling back from social media included scaling back from comment arguments, which made me feel horrible and angry and on edge).

Scared I'll run out of ideas after like, two ideas.

Scared that I will have big dreams and expectations that will amount to nothing.

Scared that I won't like it after I try.

Scared of putting myself out there as a woman.

I know that all of these are just... not good enough reasons to not do it. I can think of counter arguments very quickly.

Scared of it being a big failure:
Then you will have accomplished just as much as you have now. Anything can fail, but that didn't stop you from going to school for your undergrad or graduate degree. It didn't stop you from doing a complicated extended essay topic in high school. It didn't stop you from auditioning for a performance swing dance team (which actually was something I failed at, incidentally). You'll never experience any success if you don't do anything.

Scared of idea-theft:
This seems unlikely, but you can protect yourself from this. Other people put themselves out there, why can't you? You are also likely to learn about this one way or the other in science at some point.

Scared of criticism:
That's life. You will have to learn to deal with it. It will be unfair sometimes. All you can do is try, there is literally no way to avoid this one, but not just with a blog.

Scared of running out of ideas:
I think every creative has this fear, but if your well of creativity is really that shallow, wouldn't you rather know? Then at least you can work on digging it deeper.

Scared of big expectations and dreams:
So keep your expectations managed. And let yourself feel what you feel. It's okay to be disappointed, frustrated, and upset. It's also okay if you don't feel those things. You've been going to therapy for too long now to let this hold you back.

Scared I won't like it:
Okay again, better to know this than to always wonder what if. Also- you can literally just quit whenever, this is just a side thing with no bearing on your wellbeing or current position.

Scared of the misogyny:
This one is, again, unavoidable at the moment. But you can be anonymous and have only people in your real life know who you are.

And yet... unsurprisingly, the fear is still there. That feeling is still real, even if all the reasons for feeling it don't stack up (it feels a little like those little grid visual illusions, where every time I look at a fear it disappears, but it feels like the others are still there until I turn my focus on them, and they disappear. The fear feels real even though I can't really "look" straight at it in my mind). That's something I am no longer surprised by- something I've been fortunate to learn in therapy and through exploring self help. Sometimes the feeling is just there anyway, demanding to be felt. 

Well, you know what they say about courage!

What if... we lived in a feminist utopia tho...

Something I've been thinking about recently is this interaction I had on a message board a little over a year ago (before I stopped using it because, like nearly every other site on the internet, it made me too angry). I was increasingly uncomfortable with just how much easier my life was when skipping my periods on birth control- I still am. I had gone on this message board to clumsily make the argument that it was sexist to say that women would be considered worse workers if we were actually given accommodations for something we can't control- in my experience, most women have one or two days every period where they are in a lot of pain, are bleeding heavily, and in general could probably stand to benefit from like, an extra week or two of vacation time every year just as a general rule. It was roundly pointed out to me that this was not the case, which of course made me angry, and I have been sitting with that anger and discomfort for a long time, and today my brain gave me some thoughts on how to work it out.

The thing is that it remains objectively easier for me to skip periods. I don't have to wonder when it's coming every month, deal with the side effects of it (i.e. anything that happens beyond the shedding of the lining itself)- for me, pain, energy loss, insane levels of bloating (I actually look a few months pregnant- this is not an exaggeration for dramatic or comedic effect, it is a LOT), and reduced patience/short temper due to being in pain and not having the energy necessary to deal with all those annoying little things that happen in a day. I'm not wrong that giving women time off of work to deal with this would be helpful, an equalizer, a reasonable accommodation- my issue is that under our current view of the "ideal worker" it would still make women "worse." No company wants to hire an employee who is going to be working less but getting paid the same because it's not in line with every company's main motive- profit. A worker who can work all the time and not need much in return is the ideal- this is why we have to have a minimum wage. However.

HOWEVER. Who is the best kind of person in this scenario? Yes, there are other intersections here- this person probably doesn't have any physical disabilities that need accommodations. They don't have any mental illnesses. All of their family members are either dead, and they've completed the grieving process, or healthy and well (same for their friends). These people are probably more often thin- the company wants a desirable image to make more profit. They probably speak, as a first language, the language of the country they're in, and maybe in other parts of the world, English (this is a guess on my part- I'm in the English-speaking parts of the world where I wouldn't know about this as an issue). These people do not get sick or have any other ailments that require them to take time off or not work as fast or efficiently. They do not have family obligations. Who is this sounding like, in your estimation? Yes, that's right- healthy adult white men. 

Of course, I'm not new to this. We all know that healthy white men have it pretty good. Where I live, the average healthy white man is more likely to be employed. He is likely to have someone at home to take care of the house and kids, if family life is his jam. He can also opt out with little to no societal repercussions. He will not have to worry about getting pregnant and seeking an abortion or assistance with the child, let alone what that will do to his body. He does not need to ask about maternity leave. He does not have 1-2 days a month where he is in pain, tired, irritable, and bleeding that take away his ability to work. He does not have to worry about walking back to his car in the dark. He also doesn't need any physical accommodations at work. He can use all the standard size everything, drive safely in his car to work in the morning or take the bus without someone implying they'd love to fuck him in a painful way that wouldn't be enjoyable for him and isn't something he particularly wants to think about on the bus on the way to or from work, he can take the stairs, curbs and poorly built ramps are not an issue for him, nor are standard size doors without any electronic assistance. Also relevant here- his clothing options and choices are, for the most part, simple and comfortable. He is not required to style his face or hair. The office or workplace temperature will be comfortable for him. And so on and so forth.

This is because the world is built for men. Almost every last little thing about daily life has been designed with men in mind... including like, all of capitalism. In particular, in North America, things are built for healthy white men. But zeroing in- specifically they are built for men, and a white man will benefit from some things in the same way a black or indigenous man will. And I was trying to imagine an exception being made for women, because that's how everything works. You start with your standard, and then as all those pesky laws and regulations force you to, you make accommodations to let others have access. 

What I'm thinking of here is: what if we used our imagination and knowledge of feminist analyses of history and present-day to think of a world where women were the default? Where the world was designed first with women's unique needs and bodies and lived experiences in mind? What would that kind of a world look like in the first place? What if we went back thousands of years and imagined that all of human history had revolved around a central idea of, say, women being revered as "closer to god" for their ability to "create life" (gestation, birth) which made people believe- oh, they are inherently wiser, more moral, what we all should strive to be. What if instead of (to borrow from marxist feminist analysis in the most basic of ways) a situation where women were exploited for their child-producing abilities to give a man the power to produce as many little "helpers" and "workers" as possible, to give the world in general the ability to make lots and lots more people to force into poorly paid work that made a few people rich... what if instead of that we had some kind of situation where women exploited men for their ability to... I don't know, give their offspring genetic diversity and have the free time to do household chores WITHOUT needing time off for, say, gestation or recovering from birth? What if it became custom for women to keep several men around the house, and sons grew up knowing they would effectively be "sold" into a household with a head woman where they would be expected to perform some kind of menial household labor- cleaning, repairs, cooking, farming, childcare, etc- for the rest of their lives, and all society thought of them was that they were stupid because "how could you possibly know anything, you are nothing but a brute good for sperm and hard labor." How would that translate into the modern day? Maybe a woman would keep one or two men by her side as companions, and there would be markers of that- these men wouldn't age as quickly, they would be dressed fashionably, they would look down their noses and sneer at those poor, working-class men who weren't pretty or lucky enough to be in their station... even though they were still wholly disempowered and had few choices in life.

I'm more than willing to bet someone can poke a million holes in that scenario I just described- and that's fine. I'm primarily interested, though, in holes being poked by women who can think of ways to imagine around it. You'll also notice this scenario is pretty basic- there is still class oppression, for example (something that can't just be "flipped" like sex-based oppression can), and my example is very Euro-centric (in that it loosely describes a simple sex-flipped version of a basic idea of "the way of life in the olden days" in a place like Britain or its North American colonies). I'm not going to deny that, or say that this imagining is a good idea, a better idea, how things "should have been", none of that. I'm simply inviting you to consider: what if women had been centered all along, and men cast as the "other"? What if women's gifts were seen as things we should all strive for, and men were told they should "act like a woman" to succeed in the world? What if many things traditionally associated with men were associated with women?

Why am I asking this? I think it's a good exercise to get people to consider just how made up so many of our social and societal norms are, how they can damage thinking and have people writing think pieces about absurdly anti-science concepts like "brain sex" to justify their oppression, and so on. I think it's healthy for women and girls in particular to think about the ways that the world has failed them and how they would like it to change. I think it can help people reimagine what they ask for when it comes to change. What parts of the system should we change? Is it even possible to change this system to that ideal, or do we have to do a major overhaul? Importantly: I want to get people fired up about the things they want to see so they think about how to make those changes. This involves thinking about why things are the way they are- where did the problem start? How have we let it go unchecked? How can we check it now? I also think it might help some people play out those alternate realities and realize some of the things they thought were incredibly meaningful changes are actually pointless, useless, and helping no one (men wearing makeup and dresses can still participate in your oppression...) and refocus their efforts where they will actually make a difference.

So... tell me truly. How do you think the world could be different if one aspect of women's oppression was gone, never happened, or flipped around?

A little update

 All those things I wrote about struggling with last semester? Including my mental health, my paper, my experiments? I figured them out. They aren't even complete, I just actually figured out how to do them.

Thought I'd just put this here for my future back-reading. Everything turned out okay. Even your hyper-critical lab meeting turned out okay. It's fine. You're smart enough.

You'll figure it out. Just keep trying.

On perfectionism

 What inspired me to write this post was also almost the reason I took down my "how to get into a science-based master's thesis in Canada" post. It was pointed out to me through a surprising format this morning (tiktok, of all places) that sometimes perfectionism can look like setting absurdly high standards for yourself to prevent yourself from moving forward. Standards like, oh, I don't know, not knowing exactly how something is going to pan out before doing it? Like, say, not knowing how to get into grad school or what to say in an email, so not saying anything at all or even bothering to really try? Having the few half-assed attempts I made be met with crushing defeat? Like.... never even bothering to really pour myself into novel writing, or experiment planning, or reading, or anything because I might not be good at it?

I've managed to make an annual habit of making goals for the year this time of year. I used to do this at the start and end of every school year, but since life doesn't really revolve that way anymore, now I do it in January. It's always interesting to look back and see what actually ended up being a priority for me. One of my goals a few years ago was to learn how to actually french braid my hair. Another one was to do a hike solo. Neither of those were accomplished, but it doesn't really bother me. It feels like part of the process of learning how to set good goals- what actually matters to you? Having nicely braided hair doesn't. What are you actually ready to do? Not hike solo. That's okay. I was ready to do other things, and I did them. This past year in particular, many goals were set that the pandemic disrupted. That sucks- they were things I actually wanted to try and manage doing, like going to conferences, and getting a picture of my fiancee and his parents and I all together. But I won't let myself be mad that I didn't magically find a way around them. I accepted my new reality and worked with it.

So this makes me think that this year a goal of mine is to make some number of mistakes. I've long thought about doing this, actually, trying to intentionally make more mistakes- not by going out of my way to do a bad job, but by making mistakes into something I want to happen to meet a goal, I give myself more freedom to try something I'd be bad at where I would make mistakes. I can very much see it being the case that someone suggests an activity or a hobby or literally anything, and I say "hell yeah- it might be a mistake! Then I can add it to the list." Assuming that makes sense. Even something like, say, doing a bolder experiment in the lab, or even just emailing someone to ask for help. If they're mad at me... then it was a mistake. Score! Another one to add to the list.

Maybe that will work and maybe it won't, but I feel like my life would be so much richer if I would just allow myself to fail or fuck up. If I was counting them, trying to accrue as many as possible. If that was my goal, instead of doing all these things perfectly or well... how much bigger could I be?

Something to think about, in any case. If you know me in real life, tell me... how does 52 sound? 120? I like to use nice round numbers so that I can figure out how many mistakes I should be making, but I also want to ease myself into it (or perhaps setting the wrong number will be another mistake I can cross off the list!)

-swegan

I have been Humbled.

 I'm going to open this by unceremoniously and immaturely letting you know I am writing this from within my office at school. One other grad student is here- one I have a complicated relationship with, whose life, as far as I can tell, consists ONLY of coming to school- and since I don't think she is leaving any time soon despite it being 9:15 PM, I'm going to hope she thinks I'm doing something useful, since I don't want her to like, Know Things about me.

I am in the process of going through my old lab books. When I started grad school, I had the benefit of having old lab books left here from previous years I'd been in the lab. I thought they'd be a gold mine! So many protocols I'd done already! What I failed to account for is that I'm an idiot. I NEVER included pertinent details and the books are a mess. Sometimes I could find some info, but it seems that past me just sort of used these as a log. Which, to be fair, is how I was taught to keep a lab book, excepting that stint in GENET 375 which clearly left my brain as quickly as it entered. How ridiculous! I thought at the time, as I'd spend HOURS in the library working on making sure my lab notebooks for this lab course contained everything required for the grade. This is an absurd amount of work! Well...

Look. This lab is like, 80% ukrainains. The thing about people who are recently from Eastern Europe, as far as I can tell, is that they are very harsh and don't have time for soft sentimentality (which definitely makes me the weepy one, given how weepy I am in relation to much softer kinds of people). They're not quite German in their efficiency, but they are intimidating. Back in February I sought help from one of them for an unrelated issue, and he saw fit to tear into me about my lab book being kept badly. I said nothing at the time. I mentioned it offhand to my (yes, also Ukrainian) supervisor and she said "we'll take a look at it." With her, I've learned, this means that it will not ever be looked at again unless someone else brings it to her attention. So nobody said anything.

Upon using an internet forum (facebook group) to ask my fellow grad students this question, I was rewarded with a lot of answers that said the same thing: Yes, you have been keeping your lab book wrong. Well, sure, said I, growing more flustered. That's what they think. But this system is working for me! It's just a bit disorganized, but it flows better. I need to write these things down. I need to write them down in this order. I know I'm including all the right details now, not like past me who was an idiot who kept her lab books the same way but this time is somehow different, better.

In case you haven't figure out where this is going: it's not different or better. For the past two and a half years I have been keeping my lab books exactly as poorly as I did in undergrad- in HIGH SCHOOL. I thought that because I was older now and had one degree under my belt, I was somehow Smarter and Better- but I'm not. I'm just as stupid as I ever was.

Much as the comment to me in February about my lab book could have been better phrased (even a modicum of kindness and empathy would have done wonders), it was correct. I have been keeping my lab books entirely wrong and that man was right to call me on it.

Today I finally embarked upon a journey into my lab books, thinking SURELY I could organize them into a system that would make sense to some future user in this new format. And I couldn't use them. Listen to me: I did the work, within the past 5 years, I have presented it at conferences, I have presented it in lab meetings, I have presented it to my committee, and I can't figure out what I did. There are calculations with no context attached to them. Which MTT assay was that for? There are so many wasted lines of pure garbage updates I should have been able to phase out within the first 6 months- about when I last split something, changed media, when something got infected... Let me tell you, for the past 6 months I have NOT been recording this information and my cells have stayed just as alive as ever. I have also saved myself a lot of page space.

This is, of course, really fucking embarrassing. I've changed the format I keep my lab books in now, and it does make more sense, while still giving me room to make notes for myself, do calculations, etc. I suppose this is part of the process of being a student, and if anything this is just proof that getting a PhD doesn't make me smart (even if I didn't get a master's in between), that thinking very logically and systematically doesn't always translate to my behavior being logical or systematic. I've been keeping a fucking journal at the bench for the past few years. And while yes, I caught it early enough to be able to produce some sort of guide for whatever sad sack has to use this book after me, and to fix the latter half of my research work so that it IS somewhat comprehensible... it's not a good look for me. 

At the end of the day, the format I'm using now still isn't even what I was told to do back in February. That format assumes that I do each experiment in a one-shot, and I'm not sure where that lab manager got it from, or whether he explained it badly, or whether it works for the kind of work he does, but I've adapted it so it will work for me, and I'm sure it will change over time. I've been lazy with details, keeping things in my head and letting them go when I'm done with them. And now I earnestly have to try to change the entire way I work.

I'm also not sure how to end this except to say if you too were thinking of Icarus, you're not the only one.

Not to be dramatic but I get the news fatigue now

 I know we're all like, fatigued of hearing about news fatigue, but I'm honestly surprised it took me this long. THIS long to finally acknowledge that a big goddamn drain on my energy is the pandemic and the way it, as it has done for everyone else globally, has leached its greedy little fingers down to every last bit of my life. I don't think I realized how much I, as an introvert, needed all that social interaction I was getting. All that stopping by my friend's house for dinner and hanging out, all that camping, all those trips with friends, the occasional parties where I could sit next to people on the couch and drink 5 hard ciders, the dances I didn't go to because I was burnt out by them then. I don't regret that, but you know... what I would give to go dancing now.

Lately it's really been too much to think about. Redbeard and I want to get married in about a year and a half and it feels impossible to plan. How many people can we even have there? If we want to do it in the summer, will things be easier? Do I have to capitulate to an outdoor wedding? What if it rains on the day of? Do I just send 100 people home? Do my extended relatives understand that this means I can't invite them anymore? That it's more important to me to have there the people who are close to me now? How do we book a venue? How do we plan to do a n y t h i n g this way? Will people be vaccinated then? How many guests do we think will be in that category? Fuck, I can't even figure out if we can have an engagement party this summer. Where would we do it? Who would we invite? No one can travel very far and we have so few friends here, and of those who can travel, so many are not in a position to be staying in a hotel just for one party. 

I used to talk a lot about how I didn't really picture my own wedding. I still don't. But the one thing I had started to picture was the reception. A big room with string lights, a room with music that increases in volume as the night goes on, a dance floor full of people I love absolutely getting the fuck down and not giving a shit about what they look like, getting lightly trashed with friends, my hair coming loose and sticking to sweat on the back of my neck, Redbeard smiling and laughing at me, wondering how many good candids our photographer will get. A bachelorette party, I had pictured... a weekend of playing dumb drinking games with friends, making big group meals, playing loud music and being stupid all together, introducing some friends to other friends. What do I get now? What do any of us get? A quiet meal together? Socially distanced partner dancing? Individually wrapped cupcakes? Do we ever get to do it normally or is this virus just here now? Like, forever?

And it's hard to just be like okay, I'll compartmentalize this and think about other things but I can't. Every last thing is tainted. I can't focus on lab work because I worry all the time the lab will be shut down again. I can't watch TV and unwind because nobody socially distances on TV and that's enough to break my immersion these days. I can't play sims because I get jealous of them and how they can just have friends over on a whim. The one time I managed to get away was going camping, but even THAT had the spectre of my return to a mom-imposed quarantine looming over it. Sometimes reading is enough, I guess, until I remember that I can't go to the damn library anymore. I can't go fucking anywhere these days, and even when I do, it doesn't feel the same. Is it ever going to be the same again? Did it take this long for the grief to hit me because I can't keep living in survival mode anymore?

All of it makes me think of the people on social media who rail against masks, against closures, against restrictions and limits. Maybe they're scared too. Maybe they're looking for any last little thing to hold onto that means this won't be forever, things aren't forever changed and altered, that this isn't just the way things are from now on- indefinitely and forever. Some little way we were wrong, that we overlooked something, that what we're doing isn't actually necessary, and I wonder if their ignorance is just some kind of protective mechanism so they don't have to stare their anxiety in the face and feel it, full force. I can't even say I'm doing that with the amount of avoidance I'm doing, but it's not like I get to take two weeks off to just like, grieve. We're all grieving. 

In the beginning I think I thought this wouldn't happen in the way people think no one they know will ever get cancer. Except then I met someone who has cancer. I mean, I guess a tumor isn't quite the same, but I digress. And then I fell in love with him and got engaged and I cannot tell you how much I have changed, living with that. Eventually it's just background noise, and you just accept there is nothing you can do and enjoy what you can while you can. The anxiety is shelved somewhere in the recesses of my brain- only pulled out when something happens that might give me cause to worry again. A seizure, a bad headache, a new MRI. The rest of the time I can't function with that worry open in my mind. 

I guess that's enough to give me some hope. Someday I might be able to shelve this too, to accept that this is how things are, and all I can do is work with it. But right now I'm angry, so fuck it.

-swegan

Is there actually a good space to exist online

 The first social media account I ever had was technically an MSN account. I wanted one so badly when I was 12, because all my friends had them and would talk for hours online after school. I don't actually even know if MSN counts as social media. There were no public posts or public profiles, you had to specifically add friends and then you could only talk to those people if they added you back, and if they removed you, you were SOL and couldn't do anything to them. I used MSN right through high school until it fell out of popularity and was eventually scrapped. Facebook adding an IM feature really killed it- and I really miss just having an IM platform nowadays. 

I've had a Youtube account for a long time too- I don't make any content, I just sometimes leave comments and like that I can have playlists and things saved. This is probably the least toxic one since I can't for the life of me figure out how to turn on notifications for replies to my comments, and I don't want to. I've refused to link it to my google account for years. I don't want it associated with my real name and I never will. This is maybe an okay place to exist at this point. It provides some nice content, I can choose what I want to see, and I've gone back to old playlists many times to amuse myself. 

Facebook was probably the next one. I was one of the last kids my age to get it- halfway through grade 12. My mom forbade us from getting an account until we were I think 15, and I had no interest in it until 16 or 17 when I realized that was the cool new place to hang out after school. In those days (around 2012) it was a very different place. We'd make posts and friends would add hundreds of comments, creating in-jokes that would have me in stitches that we'd reference the next day at school, or using it as a tool to collectivize work when IB got difficult. It was helpful when I left for university. But soon after that it changed- suddenly every company had a Facebook page, and now it feels like almost the entirety of my timeline is just posts from pages, or ads of posts from pages, and very little actual content, or people re-sharing viral posts made by one person about the latest hot-button topic. I mean, it's great that I can follow and engage with local politicians (at least, those that are with-the-times enough), but it's not personal anymore. One of my friends deleted her profile years ago, and though I know it's not even remotely necessary to have it anymore, I've been tempted for years.

I was on twitter very briefly between 2013 and 2014. All I did was get into arguments with companies and not understand how the platform worked. I followed a lot of people whose content I thought I was interested in, only to find that scrolling through twitter was actually really, really boring. I deleted it within a year and have never been tempted to go back. It gave me nothing.

Around this time I had just received an iPhone, which meant that Instagram and Snapchat were suddenly available to me. These ones have been pretty interesting because they both started with that same kind of only-interact-with-your-friends structure. Both have changed considerably since I first joined. Snapchat added stories and now has a whole page of Branded Content from companies. I've fallen down that Branded Content rabbit hole many times in a desperate attempt to escape my life and look at something on the internet in bed instead. But this only really happened when I wanted to get away from Instagram. Instagram for me still consists of a non-revealing name and a private account, but I've followed public brands and different public profiles from time to time. I'm starting to notice now that the majority of my feed is taken up by these people I don't even know, even if their content is really well done. That always comes because I'd unfollow everyone I didn't know personally and would be left with almost no content ever posted. In my desperate need for entertainment, I'd follow more people again. I'd spend hours on the explore page. When I tried to delete the app and take breaks from time to time, I'd just switch over to snapchat and do the same thing. For now they've both been replaced by another app that I'll get to later.

The next one was tumblr. This was my favourite and I still find myself scrolling through people's blogs. For a while Tumblr felt like the centre of the internet, the place to be. I'd see memes generated there trickling down to Facebook eventually, and I liked that I felt like I was seeing everything right as it happened. I felt like I was there to witness a lot of important moments in terms of internet culture. It also fed into some of my not-so-bright sides; I was suckered into believing far too many things and the people I was interacting with didn't view me as a person. I was just some blog. The way I left might sound embarrassing to some, but those aren't really my people anyway. I was being aggressively gaslit about a very basic facet of reality, and at the time I had just started grad school and was struggling through the refeeding portion of intuitive eating. I had just moved away from my boyfriend, was living at home again, had no idea how grad school was supposed to work, and was less than a year out of a planned suicide date. I had what I can only call a small breakdown, complete with self harm and all, and my boyfriend was becoming very concerned. He asked me to consider whether or not being on this platform was best for me. At the time, I was met with a lot of adrenaline whenever I opened the app or loaded the website as more and more people found my sideblog and decided I wasn't worthy of basic respect or humanization, and was instead worthy of wishes that I choke and die, that I be referred to as "it," all that classic tumblr stuff. In an impulsive move, I logged out, got rid of all the remember-my-password features, and decided to just NOT use the platform for a while. Two years later I signed in to prevent my account from being lost, clicked around for 5 minutes, and left. I remember how much it sucked.

I'm technically on Linkedin, but I use it so infrequently and find it so useless beyond having a resume available for anyone who googles me that I don't worry about how it impacts my life at all. I imagine when I graduate I might use it more for job-searching and some kind of weird networking, but for now it just exists as a professional public record of myself. The things I want to be attached to and associated with by people who might let me one day sell them my labor.

The same can be said for Pinterest. It's such a weird place at this point, but it's a nice place to gather pictures into categories. It never sucks me in for very long, but it has its uses. It's probably one of the least personal ones there is because it feels like so little of what's posted is actually from real people anymore, and the vast majority of users are just there to gather images. Half of the images I see are shitty weight loss ads, and the rest are professionally taken photographs that have trickled their way through the internet to be posted there. 

Reddit was the second to latest one. I was on it for less than a year. I'd been scrolling through it without an account for a while and noticed it was doing odd things to the voice inside my head. I'd been filled with self doubt, and decided if I really wanted to be on this platform, I'd make an account so I could visit less toxic subreddits. For a while, this was really nice. There's a decent intuitive eating/anti-diet/HAES community on there that's well-moderated. I finally got to engage in feminist discourse in a way other than memes. And then I started getting in arguments again. I'm not sure at this point if that's a natural skill I have, a natural flaw I have, or just how these platforms operate. Probably some mix of all three. It got to a point where it was the same as it had been with Tumblr. I took a couple of breaks, but the straw that broke the camel's back came this summer. I left a nice message for someone from the IE community I'd been privately messaging and signed out. I have no intention of opening that website again, unless I'm looking for reviews of something. 

The last one was TikTok. I know that's lame. I definitely resisted for a while, and their model sucks you in pretty well. This is one I've only been on since May or so, and it's provided me with a lot of entertainment and late nights. It gave me a window into a lot of different content I hadn't interacted with much on other platforms- particularly indigenous content. But I've noticed a lot of things lately that remind me of how Tumblr used to be, namely, the designations of different "sides" of the app and the overwhelming lack of critical thinking visible in a lot of content. On the one hand, I can follow people who remind me of me, who are going through similar journeys and struggles, and people who are trying to share help and advice who are further along in the same journey. I can watch people grow a lot of plants. I can watch people convert vans to live in them. I can learn about social issues going on in other parts of Canada that my CBC news app somehow hasn't covered yet. I can learn new recipes. I can find small businesses to support (I've bought one or two things from small businesses I found on this app). The privacy violations and angry teenagers calling me "Karen" for telling them not to cheat (and there's a whole host of thoughts behind the Karen thing, but for now I invite you to consider the implications behind the lack of a male equivalent for that term) have made me question whether or not this is something to use in the long term, especially combined with how it is rapidly turning into an app that led me to break down once upon a time.

And the thoughts on quitting each of these are complicated. I've logged out of Facebook and Instagram for short periods, and in not wanting to be "that person" who brags about taking time off, left without saying anything. This led to a lot of annoyance from people who had sent me things I didn't see, who assumed I'd still be there. I also did this with snapchat for a while. Snapchat is complicated because I've gotten a lot- and I mean a LOT- of compliments both from my friends and from my sister's friends that my snap stories made them laugh so hard. That kind of praise feels really, really good and is hard to get away from. Sometimes though I think creating it is my way of dealing with stressful situations, but it's not always the best way to deal. It also means that any time I create something to share that doesn't get that kind of reaction, I feel let down. It's an odd thing to navigate. 

There's also that changing-my-mind guilt that comes with any of this. At some point in the past, I thought each of these platforms were a good idea and recommended them to others. But nearly a decade and a half of being on these platforms is really making me start to think about whether I was right as everything becomes more commodified and alike. Some of these platforms has caused me to find ways to spend money I may not otherwise have spent. I think probably in terms of my immediate social circle, I use them more than anyone else I know, which is alienating in and of itself. Is it really a good idea to be this involved when I've taken a break from every single platform I've ever joined? Or is that normal- no one should be expected to use these things in the same way forever? I get some anxiety about quitting- it feels like cutting off a lot of connections, and beyond that, a lot of ways to know about ways to make new connections (things like volunteering opportunities, etc). Almost all the swing dance organization in my city is done over Facebook. I've learned a lot about racial inequality through Instagram. Pinterest is helping me get a handle on the very basic beginnings of wedding planning. And so on and so forth.

I heard a podcast episode about this book (a podcast I wouldn't have found without Instagram, of course) and got my hands on a copy of it from the library and read it. The book was "24/6" by Tiffany Schlain, and it really resonated with me. The author details how her family has done a "Tech Shabbat" for many years where they shut off all devices with screens on Friday night, have a nice dinner together, and spend then until Saturday evening completely unplugged. She also writes about the benefits of doing this, the dangers of being constantly connected, and gives some how-to advice. It made me think about all my anxiety about camping this summer. I was so afraid that in the few days I'd be off the grid, somehow the lab would be back up and running and I'd miss everything and have to scramble to catch up. I felt guilty about just not being accessible. I think some of the guilt associated with leaving social media is the same. Where do people reach me? How will I remain connected? How will I find new opportunities? How will I connect with my community? And as everyone is saying these days- this is all obviously way more difficult in an era where face to face communication is no longer the ideal, and it remains unknown when it will be ideal again. 

Maybe it would be worthwhile to set some limits- except that every time I do I almost always break them immediately. I think the issue is that I don't think of stuff to fill the void that not being on my phone leaves (and I know that's pathetic. I get it). I can't handle not having a place to turn to immediately distract myself from my anxiety or amuse myself when I'm bored or feel like I'm "having some fun" in a busy day before I go to bed only to have another busy day the next day. Or the most tricky void of all- the fact that social media feels like a break at my desk (which I should have known would signal to my brain that we aren't taking a break at all). I can just have a break and not worry about missing an important email! I'll be right here to answer it! And like.. the horror of that statement is not lost on me. 

It's all compounded too by the lack of time off I took this summer. I was operating under the impression that I had to be available to do lab work once we reopened in July because who knows when things might shut down again... but this means the last time I took a break longer than a long weekend was last Christmas. We all remember (or at least my blog does) how well I was doing mentally when last Christmas came around. I'm anxious right now that there's something I'm forgetting to do. The last time I took a full day away from screens was literally in June when I went camping and got engaged.

So I guess there is no good solution. I wish I'd been old enough to experience the web before social media, but by the time I was 10, Facebook already existed. I've grown up in a family that's been well-off enough to always have had a computer, and got my first computer at 12. I've picked up my phone probably 50 times while writing this whole thing, feeling uncomfortable as I do, since I know it's not perfect, and just wanting to escape into one of many apps. 

If anyone has a good solution, or wants to talk to me about this- leave a comment, message me irl, or just feel free to think about this for like, 243 days and then do any of those- all are fine. I'm willing to bed it's not just me who struggles with these things.