Oh far out - talk about distracted! The Vlog Every Day in April (VEDA) challenge has been the bright shiny thing that has been enabling my blog-neglect.
Recently I heard someone use the word "neglect" in reference to a manager's relationship with her team and I was like "oh, yeh, what a great word." It was true of that situation and it's so. true. of. this. situation. too.
What little brain power and slivers of creativity I have are being channeled into (potentially) finishing, for the first time ever (don't speak too soon), an internet challenge. Uploading a video every day in the month of April. And yes, it's only the 24th so I have about a week to go and anything could happen but I've never got this far before and I'm hashtag excited!
But it's meant that my little grey boxes (not you, the blog's calendar) are not being coloured in here at thejamjar.com and that annoys me.
Recently, VlogBrother John Green posted a video entitled Framing. It reminded me of a talk Dooce's Heather Armstrong gave at Webstock 2016 about the dirty side of the room. Both commented on what we see, and what we show, on the internet and social media in particular is curated. The shots and subjects and details have all been chosen and lit for the audience's viewing pleasure.
We curate the lives we show. We show the togetherness of our lives, the cute shots of our pets, and we frame scene after scene of what we want you to see. We don't show you the dirty curtains on the window our natural light is streaming through or the fact there isn't any dinner on the table yet again because mommy needs to edit her video or that while we were outside snapping a #selfie for our thumbnail image we stood in the crap our "cute" dog did in the yard and we most certainly didn't document the patches of poop we then traipsed through the house.
I don't think that's just me.
Well it was just me who traipsed the dog crap down the hallway but you know what I mean.
Social media sometimes feels like an extreme version of having people over for dinner. We make our houses look especially tidy and the meal seem incredibly effortless, with every knife, fork and salt shaker is determining the overall impression. Showing our lives through the internet viewport is just the same, but more: more people: more so.
I am not sure there is anything wrong with that. The internet is the canvas we create our online content upon and I for one don't need a canvas with dog poop on my hallway carpet as the thing that lives on through the pixels of the future.
But I do need to remember that because a person looks "together" on an Instagram feed doesn't mean they're any more so than I am. And just because they have a metric shit-tonne of views on their videos doesn't mean they don't struggle every single day with the pressures that come with being in the internet eye that way.
Just saying - social media is a creative window into a curated world - not a documentary.