Feeling Feelings

As someone who deeply respects my mother and her advice, sometimes it can be hard to consider it objectively and question whether it is right for me. Cause she’s my mom, so of course she’s right…. right? Well….

Her lessons of modesty, privacy, and restraint, which could make up a whole book on their own, surely seem old-fashioned in this era of full disclosure and emotional transparency.

Yesterday she texted me, concerned because I hadn’t tweeted in almost a week. But I’d been feeling the stress and strain of the post-college job search, and the only things I could’ve thought to tweet would have been depressing, kvetching moans about job rejections (I’ve received many) and crying in the car (I’ve done it a lot).

I told her I was following her guidelines, staying mysterious and not blowing my problems up in public view. Because when your problems become your identity… then it’s much harder to escape them.

There are definitely those for whom public vulnerability forms a central part of their personal brand, and they are all the better for it. I’m just not one of those people! The exigencies and algorithms of social media may tempt users into favoring their most dramatic and revealing content, in a self-fulfilling feedback loop of feelbadness. It’s kind of scary.

The temptation to self-exorcise publicly in return for interaction has never, in my experience, paid off. It has always been better to step away and calm down before returning to social media, rather than issue my issues (so to speak) to an audience of over a thousand. And look— today I’m feeling better, and I’m back to tweeting about stupid shit :) Same as it ever was!