My Social Media Anxiety & FOMO

I was watching a video titled 'Do you know yourself?' by some guy called Proctor Gallagher. As I was browsing through my archives the title caught my attention and I though 'why not?'. I then proceeded to play it in the background while I pursued some other task, so you could say I wasn't paying attention. Apparently Gallagher didn't like that.

So as the interview was playing in the background certain words and key concepts started to jump out at me. "Who are you?" he would say. "...now you might be tempted to answer with your name, or your job, your family name or even gesture towards yourself to signal 'this', your body. But are you your body? Are you your name? your surname? your profession?" "This guy is dope" I thought, "...you know we never really ask ourselves these ques-WAIT A MINUTE WHO THE FUCK AM I???". I decided to stop what I was doing and pay attention. This seemed like one of those videos that know how to twist your ego's arm into letting them in the club.

I didn't have an answer. I still don't have an answer. I'll never have an answer. Because the question doesn't exist.

The question doesn't exist in the same way reality doesn't exist, atomically speaking. You know, the whole theory of atoms having empty spaces between them and being arranged in such a way that, technically, everything is not really real or 'there'. So bringing this back to the question. I thought about how the 'who' and the 'you' already make the question unsolvable, - at least with any current metric of understanding we currently hold. Our understanding of time and space, let alone consciousness is far too basic to attempt to hold such a vast existential concept in one breath.

This was the answer I was looking for. After a bloody convoluted struggle I was enlightened by a lay-mans epiphany. 'You are what you do. You do what you want. So be what you are.'(tm)

How does this relate to Social Media Anxiety & FOMO? Well, one of the side effects of this lay-mans epiphany was a string of new questions I then asked myself. "Am I comfortable with being seen? How do I shield myself from peoples expectations? What if they don't like me? What if I don't like me? What if I don't look good?". And with regards to the FOMO was essentially "Am I gonna be a recluse now? When the world is getting so LIT".

I could go back and forth on why I decided to drop out of social media. But the simple truth is I was bored. I was bored and lazy, didn't have anything I felt was important to say and thought the whole thing to be superficial. Well that's the anxiety half of it. The other half was fear, because social media is inherently a form of public speaking - just that you tend to be more exposed than you would think. When I think about it this way I understand that public speaking is a social skill just like any other. A challenge to face with one's head up high and not run away from, come what may. When I think about it in that way I start to feel that maybe it's not so bad after all.