Just last week I decided to return to Facebook after leaving it several years ago. In addition, I activated a twitter account, much to the surprise of my spiritual teacher. While I also have had a Google Plus page for some time now, none of these social medias are being utilized by me for what one might think.
The truth is, the only reason why I have any of them today is to support this blog. While the main purpose of why I started writing was to help myself heal, it seems as if my words have also been helping others to heal as well. With that being said, I know how important it is in today’s day and age to use social media to reach greater numbers of people, hence the reason why I’m now using Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on automating this blog’s posting process to publish the links to my posts simultaneously on all three. Beyond that though, I have no desire to utilize any of them for what so many others are these days.
Since the emergence and explosion of social media, the planet seems to becoming more and more immersed into living in a bits and bytes world. While I only enjoy using the Internet and its social media for research and to publicize my writings these days, there was a time when the majority of my life was spent on them.
I was once guilty of taking “selfies” constantly and posting them. I was also notorious for placing my status out there of where I was at any given time. But all of that behavior just made me a lot more selfish and self-centered to be perfectly honest. It also often got me in trouble when I posted my harsh opinions about various things out there for everyone to see. The worst part about it though was that I became more interested in living a digital fantasy life than I was in connecting with others in person. And sadly, all of these things are the unfortunate side effects to what the social medias and the digital age seem to be doing to society now.
While it’s my hope that greater numbers will find my blog now that I’m more connected on these social medias, I refuse to allow myself to use them for any other purpose other than this. I really don’t want to ever return to that old life where I made myself believe I was that important solely because I had hundreds of friends connected to me online. I also don’t want to go back to posting throughout the day where I’m at, what I’m doing, or about any of my other day-to-day things. I really don’t believe that my life is meant to be important on that kind of a level, but I do believe the spiritual words I write have far greater depth and weight because they continue to not only help me heal but others too.
Hopefully I can stick to my words and keep the promise to myself that I won’t let the social medias take over my life all over again. And hopefully people will find my blog a little better now. But what I really want is to continue experiencing the majority of my life outside of this bits and bytes world, and thankfully, I’m still doing that.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson