Welcome Back,

It’s been nearly a year since I’ve put fingers to keyboard and sat down to write a blog post.

The digital world has changed so much in the last decade that I’ve been working online - and weekly blog posts have been replaced by a fast paced consumerism of media that never sleeps.

I miss the days of dialling in. That sweet little sound of AOL making its connection. You’d finish tea after school and ensure your mum was finished on the phone so you could literally plug in the internet to the PC and speak to your mates on MSN; only to be thrown off half an hour later because mum’s friend was calling back.

I’m more frequently finding myself mourning the simplicity of my childhood in general. That slower pace of life, where you knocked on your friends front door to see if they wanted to play at the park. Or could only text your crush after school until your credit ran out on your Nokia 3210.

Curated content started way back in the days of MySpace - even if we weren’t consciously aware of it. There was a distinct aesthetic - a need to connect with like minded people through self-expression, and it was exciting. But with technology developing at the speed of light, we’ve become heavily addicted to what we consume. I often speak with my friends about our impulse to aimlessly scroll on instagram whilst we watch our favourite series on Netflix. Binging it in one sitting because we couldn’t possibly wait for weekly episodes and sharing our thoughts about it on our socials. We are seemingly unable to disconnect from the world for a prolonged length of time without feeling antsy, or left behind.

The desire to sit and dedicate time to reading (or writing) a blog post has diminished, and in its place we crave that instant gratification of likes, comments and shares.

And so I stopped to ask myself recently:

Am I enjoying this?

And the answer was, no.

I feel dissatisfied with constantly consuming so much content. In order for people to stay current, what they produce needs to be shorter and snappier, punchier but even more perfect. And I am so bored. I don’t feel present. It doesn’t excite me to see the people I follow online all regurgitating exactly the same content - it never has. So I find myself seeking out the pages that take things slowly and who are inspired by their surroundings, not what they see online.

I’m a woman in her thirties - and had somehow arrived at the conclusion that I must be simply ‘old hat’. Because I haven’t joined TikTok, and never had snapchat, I’ll just be left behind and the next generation will step up to take over.

But I call bullshit.

There is so much space left for a more considered way of consuming. Yes we can build and adapt what we already share - I’m not suggesting that if we never try new things we will remain ahead of the curve. But ultimately, my core belief is that if we continue to create and consume in the speed in which we are, there’s only one outcome: burnout.

So I’m choosing: resilience.

To create purposefully and consume mindfully. To re-build connections online that feel meaningful and share what I feel proud of.

I want to embrace trying new things, but constantly remind myself that there is still time and space to do the things I love, too.

Will you join me?