Farewell to real-time social media sharing (mostly)

One of my struggles with social media pre-break (actually, let’s call it what it was: a Capital-D Detox) was feeling pressure to share things right away. I realize this was largely self imposed. It was still difficult to resist.

The urge was especially salient after moving into our van. Living on the road full time, our pace of travel can be quick. I felt weird sharing clips from Banff after we’d already driven hundreds of miles to a new destination… posting photos from a climate we’d left far behind… muddling the chronology of where we’d been.

But there was no reason for that to feel weird.

It’s perfectly reasonable to share things after the fact. (Even more reasonable than lots of real-time posting when we consider online safety. I’ve never published anything location-specific while still in that exact spot, but I’ve come closer than I probably should have.)

So in this new “era” of my time on social media, I have bid the pressure of real-time sharing farewell. Adieu. Perhaps gtfo. Whatever you want to say.

If I take footage of dolphins in Florida and don’t get around to posting it until we’re in North Carolina? The world will not end. (We’re all shocked. I can feel it.) If I process an encounter we had with multiple off-leash dogs for a week before polishing and eventually publishing my journal entry? Big whoop. If a few photos exist only in my phone memory and not on an Instagram story — more than that, if a few moments are never digitized at all? That’s fine. I still lived them.

Some rare situations are timely. But almost always my reflections are still valid a few days or weeks or even months after I first experience them.

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My favorite side effect of exiling post-in-the-moment pressure is that I get to be more thoughtful about my sharing. Even just taking a day to sit with something can help me understand it more. How did I feel then, how do I feel now? What do I think? Do I even want to share this widely, or is it one of those shining (sometimes dark) things I share with only Sean and Scout?

Plus on the logistics front, I get to schedule posts now. I’ve always avoided this because it reminded me of my marketing-agency days — it seemed impersonal — but scheduling is a great option if we’re trying to limit mindless social media scrolling while still enjoying the connections of the platform. (When I log on to manually post something, it seems inevitable that I end up blindly consuming a stream of reels from people I’ve never heard of.)

I’m also in charge of pawsandreflect.blog in a way I’ll never be of our Instagram. When Meta scrapped the guide functionality last winter, I was distraught — I’d spent hours (and I mean hours) organizing our feed posts into collections people could easily scroll through. Of course it was no big deal in the end (goodness knows hardly anyone seemed to look at our organized content before asking questions or making assumptions anyway, ha ha ) but I realized I needed to invest the bulk of my effort in a place I can actually control.

Instagram could, at any point, decide to make changes big enough to affect our content. By focusing on our blog I bypass those worries.

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To this end, here’s how I’ve loosely conceptualized my return to Instagram. (The whole point is to feel more casual about the platform. Paradoxically, laying out goals like this helps me relax!)

• Stories are for random updates whenever I feel excited to share. Only when I feel excited to share, though. I refuse to give in to pressure that I “need” to be posting a certain number of slides each day. (Stories are also for “announcing” that I’ve created a new feed post, because apparently that’s one of the only ways to make sure certain followers get to see them. Again, I join the crowd of digital natives bemoaning The Almighty Algorithm.)

• Feed posts are for recapping new pieces I’ve published, and feel particularly proud of, on this blog. I mean it when I say I’m prioritizing longer-form writing. Even if it’s just a short article formatted here instead of a lengthy Instagram post!

• Carousels are for collections of photos from moments I’ve enjoyed lately, little visual recaps that didn’t make it on stories or stuff I want to “live longer” in a permanent place. They’re also for infographic-type designs, if I feel inspired to make more of those.

• Reels are for videos I love that inspire a few thoughts, even if they’re just basic. For clips I find myself wanting to watch over again and shove under the nose of the world.

And blog posts here are for everything else. Longer reflections, informal essays, “guides” I’m writing with a specific goal in mind, the whole gamut.

Basically: The Paws and Reflect book manuscript is my ongoing “source of truth” for dog-related thoughts. That’s the most important place training and ownership musings are going to live right now. This blog is second in the rankings for both dog thoughts and other ramblings. And Instagram is a casual place to stay connected with people I enjoy, point connections to these longer thoughts, and revel in the (reasonably decent) photographs my simple iPhone captures of the places we get to go… sometimes weeks after we actually went there.

I’m not sorry for that.