Erica

It’s wild that I removed meta apps off my phone and set an intention to be more present in my local community and just a few weeks later I have a bunch of new mom friends, more social invites than I can keep up with, and am talking with friends on a more regular basis on the good old telephone ❤️

Gammelkäring by Myrkur! I’m not sure if it’s originally a “spring” song but it is a folk song and it has a nice spring-y brightness to it

When I felt the pull, I refocused on my kids. When they were napping, I listened to a book and washed dishes. It’s literally giving me hours of my day back which is great and also fucking scary. We’ll see how it goes here. Twitter never captured much of my attention.

Ok I know it’s not that interesting to keep talking about social media on social media but… I took meta apps off of my phone this weekend. The desire to check them and the FOMO is strong. Like nicotine addiction strong. It’s wild.

We’re trying to figure out how to do this at 9,000 with rocky soil and 6 months of snow. A makeshift greenhouse is probably in our future this summer.

I was up at 4 but it was because my kids wouldn’t f*cking sleep 😅 but seriously… if 45’s immigration and tariff measures go through… we are most definitely going to experience a food shortage. Specifically fresh produce.

I’m hoping this platform will facilitate more conversation

June can’t come soon enough 🖤 and I agree it can definitely be a place for people to connect from around the world. I think Insta is really designed to be a 1:many communication channel though and it’s where I’ve primarily been since FB was overtaken by advertisers.

Will I delete all of this tomorrow? Who fucking knows. Maybe. But l drafted this in a blank Google doc like a true aging millennial, so I hope not.

But for some fucking reason, right now, I’m appreciating younger Erica’s vulnerability, trust, and willingness to share my full range of human emotions with my friends. Because that’s what it was there for.

When those early FB posts pop up I’m used to filing them in the “wtf was I thinking this is the absolute cringiest shit” category.

I suppose some people have been doing this all along, but this is the most I’ve shared of myself on social media, probably since the early 2010s when I put the worst breakup of my life on public display. It hasn't felt worthwhile or safe.

What happens if I use this platform like a reverse answering machine where I leave random curiosities, love letters, snippets of inner dialogue, funny stories, stories only I find funny, and angsty rants as if I’m calling my best friend just because? I guess I’m about to find out.

But I suppose what I’m getting at is that in the two decades I’ve been using various social media platforms I’ve never really stopped and asked why. What will I lose if I don’t engage? What happens if I don’t play the game and get just as fucking weird here as I am in real life?

It is not lost on me that social media has at times acted as an important tool for specific movements and people have found solace in social media connections. I met my life partner & the father to my children on Tinder, ffs

It has become a place that demands our attention, exhausts us, and steals our time.

And worse, the reality of the social media experiment has leaned heavily toward the perverse inversion of all of that. A place where Spirit is sacrificed in the name of “the algorithm” and human existence is often reduced to monetization.

A continuation space for real-life, wandering, non-linear, occasionally unhinged, occasionally cringy, happy, sad, and everything in between moments of people just being people. But social media has never fulfilled that for me.

Being here is so strange. I’ve been trying to answer why I’m here at all. My motivation is clear: I want to connect with my friends. I’m desperately clinging to the notion that social media can be a digital space for love and laughter, care and connection. Organize when things need to be organized.

This is a much more thoughtful introduction than my “wtf is this/I hate meta” first post 😆 I appreciate you!

I don’t know what I’m doing here but the Meta hellscape is too much. Sooooo here we gooooo