Returning to Social Media after a month away.
I ended 2024 listening to Cal Newport’s book “Digital Minimalism.” It’s a book speaking on the importance of solitude and how, in the modern world, endless entertainment in our pockets means we never have to have a second alone with our thoughts if we don’t want to.
Cal speaks about how slowness and time away from external information is crucial if you want to make quality stuff. I’m inclined to agree. It seems my ability to create from the heart is directly influenced to my ability to set boundaries with external noise, especially in the attention economy.
Cal’s book inspired me to start 2025 year with a 30 day social media fast. I’m currently on day 28 and by the fact I’m posting this today means I’ve obviously broken the fast. Maybe I’m just naturally more drawn to 28 day cycles rather than 30 days. Shock.
On my return I notice my Instagram page has just breached 300K followers and my soup video has 10 million views.
“Heck” I think to myself.
There I was at LIDL, wondering if I should spend 35 pence or 69 pence on the soup for the soup video. I thought 69 pence was too much to spend on soup as a prop, but the 69 pence one was the colour I wanted so I decided to splash out in the name of creativity. I suppose 69 pence to 10 millions views is quite a good return on investment, after all, the video did make me a whopping 8 pounds on TikTok!
The script for that soup video took me more than 6 months to write. I revisited it so many times, refining it bit by bit. That video has been a reminder of the importance of working on something over a longer period of time and really pouring my heart into it. After 2 years of dedicating myself to short form videos, I’m now feeling called to make longer stuff. Books, films and the like. I’m gonna still be posting short form stuff here because I love it, but maybe not at the rate I was before.
If youre under the age of 30 you probably had a smartphone or social media from an incredibly young age. I got a smartphone when I was 14 and Facebook when I was 9. My life is completely wrapped up in these new platforms and I’ve spent so much much time here. So much time that I often forget who I am when I take these things away. If you’ve never had a good stint away from social media and smartphones and you’ve had them since before you became and adult, I really encourage you to get rid of them for a period of time to see how you feel. I was completely off social media and smartphones between January and May 2022 and thats what slowed me down enough to know my next move.
Which ironically, was making videos on the internet.
I’m a filmmaker first what can I say.
