Tag: Mental Health

Everything And Nothing At All

I never knew my head could be so busy and so empty at the same time. Since I left my job at the end of January it’s seemed like I have so much to think of – what I’ll do and where I’ll go next – but at the same time, like my life is one very much without purpose. There is no job, social life or friendship group to consider, I have no immediate prospects, and there’s little hope of me moving anywhere anytime soon. What that means is that it can be very hard to find any kind of motivation, which doesn’t bode well at all for general creativity or this blog. The fact I’m writing this off the back of an unsuccessful interview hasn’t helped matters either!

Happily, social media – that thing I was so keen to take a break from just weeks ago – has provided me with something of a solution. I’ve had Instagram for about three years now, having finally caved after years of pressure from my brother and friends, but I can’t say that I use it for promoting any kind of serious photography. I even went as far as putting a disclaimer in my bio (“don’t expect photographic masterpieces!”). The account is for documenting the world as I see it, but that doesn’t mean that the photos are useless or disposable (even though there are an awful lot of book covers among them, just to show off what I’ve been reading). Every picture tells a story, after all, so going forward, each one will have the potential to be inspiring, however blurry or unremarkable it might seem. If you recall, November/December 2018 saw me use a photo of a parked bicycle to record a podcast – and while I might be happy for that to remain buried and far away from human ears for the rest of time, I’ll hopefully be able to get enough material for a blog post or two out of what I capture from now on. It’s still entirely possible that nothing could come of this, and I never mention it again. If recent months have taught me anything, though, it’s that all I can do is try to stay positive, however hard that might be at times.

Mason

Detox Days

After two excellent posts this month by Emily and Alex, I’m back, and for the first time in a while I actually have something worth saying. A week ago, without telling anyone, I entered into a temporary social media detox. I deactivated my Facebook account for three days, turned off all Messenger notifications and looked at Twitter and Instagram as little as possible. I started writing this post then, as I don’t consider this blog to be social media. After all, what you read here is largely all my own work, and as a lot of you will know by now, it’s been an invaluable outlet for my thoughts and feelings over the last five years, so it escaped the cut. I feel I really benefited from the break and, having now finished all my work for the second year of university (madness), I went into it with some new pastimes in mind.

I won’t lie to you, they did still mostly revolve around screen time or Spotify. I finished watching Normal People, searched for some new music I could listen to while concentrating, and even saw The Lego Movie 2 with Louis. Last night, I actually decided to get some use out of my Netflix (which I’m ashamed to say is neglected far too much), and watched one of the countless well-known films I’d never seen before. In this instance, it was the highly entertaining Ocean’s Eleven. Yes, none of these things abandoned technology completely, but I still felt calmer, like some kind of weight I couldn’t quite identify had been lifted. I was talking to Alex about this feeling just the other day, and how even though giving up social media entirely would disconnect me from too many people, I can definitely see why the idea is appealing to others. My little breather has exposed just how much of a difference focusing on yourself, even for a little bit, can make. I’ll certainly think about doing it again when I feel the need – and next time, I might aim for a week off instead of three days!

Mason