REST Day 10: What You Won't See Here
Day ten--that feels significant. Ten days without the almighty scroll in hand! My thumb feels better, anyway.
It's Friday night-- a night of earlier bedtimes and catch-up sleep in our house, but I wanted to write a small something about images, pictures, and why you're not seeing any here.
I love pictures. One thing that's so beautiful and fun about social media is their accessibility, almost like a 24-hour magazine of lovely, filtered and unfiltered images scrolling across our eyes. I mean, forget what the post says, I just WANT that outfit, that plate of food, that hair, that life.
Everything looks (for the most part) so damn good on social media.
And yet.
There's the flipside, as well. We all know none of us have lives frozen in lovely time to always be smiling, always look good, always look that in love, so we search for or make up our own stories about what's behind the picture: "She made them all pose that way!" "Their makeup is professionally done..." "Who has that kind of time to cook like that?"
True or not, images evoke attention first and narrative quickly after. They also invite judgement and analysis more quickly than merely text. They are eye-catching, but rarely Truth-giving (hopefully you know I'm talking about social media photo uploads as opposed to actual intentional artistry).I've seen wonderful, thoughtful posts be ignored or misunderstood, merely for a poor image. I've seen flippant writing shared times a thousand simply because a nice graphic was included. It's exhausting.
That's one of the reasons I decided against images for this blog series. For me this REST is about not only getting away from distractions, but also resting from the constant hum of narrative and judgement I pass on every images I see. Reflection and careful thought are inward work; I decided to take a break from one more thing to draw attention outward. It's plain, I know, but I also knew a blog could become just another scroll-inducing line of images for me so I took it off the table.
I'm not sure what that means for my blogs, other than I think I'll enjoy getting back to photography and design after this season, but overall I think it's helping me think about others and see others as they are rather than how I interpret them to be online. in the same way I hope I can offer others a little truer version of myself here than maybe could be perceived on my Facebook profile.
JOURNAL PROMPT
How about you? Do you notice that seeing so many images on social media causes you to judge others or at least create a narrative or story about their lives? Do you think the life you project on social media is pretty consistent with how your life actually is, or is it different? Why?
It's Friday night-- a night of earlier bedtimes and catch-up sleep in our house, but I wanted to write a small something about images, pictures, and why you're not seeing any here.
I love pictures. One thing that's so beautiful and fun about social media is their accessibility, almost like a 24-hour magazine of lovely, filtered and unfiltered images scrolling across our eyes. I mean, forget what the post says, I just WANT that outfit, that plate of food, that hair, that life.
Everything looks (for the most part) so damn good on social media.
And yet.
There's the flipside, as well. We all know none of us have lives frozen in lovely time to always be smiling, always look good, always look that in love, so we search for or make up our own stories about what's behind the picture: "She made them all pose that way!" "Their makeup is professionally done..." "Who has that kind of time to cook like that?"
True or not, images evoke attention first and narrative quickly after. They also invite judgement and analysis more quickly than merely text. They are eye-catching, but rarely Truth-giving (hopefully you know I'm talking about social media photo uploads as opposed to actual intentional artistry).I've seen wonderful, thoughtful posts be ignored or misunderstood, merely for a poor image. I've seen flippant writing shared times a thousand simply because a nice graphic was included. It's exhausting.
That's one of the reasons I decided against images for this blog series. For me this REST is about not only getting away from distractions, but also resting from the constant hum of narrative and judgement I pass on every images I see. Reflection and careful thought are inward work; I decided to take a break from one more thing to draw attention outward. It's plain, I know, but I also knew a blog could become just another scroll-inducing line of images for me so I took it off the table.
I'm not sure what that means for my blogs, other than I think I'll enjoy getting back to photography and design after this season, but overall I think it's helping me think about others and see others as they are rather than how I interpret them to be online. in the same way I hope I can offer others a little truer version of myself here than maybe could be perceived on my Facebook profile.
JOURNAL PROMPT
How about you? Do you notice that seeing so many images on social media causes you to judge others or at least create a narrative or story about their lives? Do you think the life you project on social media is pretty consistent with how your life actually is, or is it different? Why?
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