too busy to hate myself rn
in defense of muting and unfollowing and, you know what… yeah! blocking!
I did something revolutionary toward the end of 2024.
I started to like myself!
I, a woman! In her 20s! In such trying times as these! Was really, actually starting to like myself.
A few things had taken place that definitely helped kickstart the ‘maybe I don’t hate myself anymore’ thought process:
I exited the post-grad confusion chapter of my life and started to become more comfortable with who I am and, more importantly, who I am not. Made a few changes and lost a few friends along the way, but all for the better, I know now.
I got a part-time job (that takes place out of the house and, more importantly, away from my computer) in addition to my full-time job (that takes place almost exclusively at home and entirely on my computer).
I moved out of a teeny, tiny Southern town that was several hours from the closest city and light years from the thoughts and ideas and modern conveniences of the rest of society, and moved into a major city where the average age of my neighbor isn’t double that of my own and there’s actually, you know, things to do.
As a result of those definitely-not-small changes in my life’s circumstances, I started to, you guessed it, make new friends!
I started to spend less time on my own.
Less time scrolling.
Less time contemplating.
Less time comparing.
More time talking and laughing and gossiping and caring about other people and getting invested in the minute details of their day-to-day lives.
More time learning their go-to coffee order and the names of their siblings and the insane stories about their parents that make you feel a little bit better about my own insane parents.
I started spending so much time with other people that when I had some time to spend on my own, I became far more cognizant of how I used to spend that time.
Hours upon hours upon hours comparing my life and business and apartment and closet to those of people on the internet–people I had, for the most part, never even met.
Staring in the mirror wondering how I can change my hair and face and body to fit the idea of what I thought I should be–the idea that actually wasn’t even my own, just a summary of all of the ideas I’d seen and heard on the internet.
Listening to podcasts and reading think pieces and getting more and more angry about *gestures broadly* state of the world.
Now, do I still do all of those things every now and then? Duh. A convicted felon was just inaugurated as president–it would be kind of insane to not be angry about the state of the world every now and then.
I just do those things a lot less.
Because most of my free time is no longer spent couch rotting alone and is instead spent doing, well, literally anything else, in the company of people who I really, truly love to be around, I don’t have the free time to sit around and scroll and stare and compare and slowly become more and more enraged.
I’ve started to create a life I love so deeply, filled with people and places and things that fill me with so much joy and take up so much of my time and attention, that I don’t have the time to hate myself.
I simply do not have the time.
So when I am scrolling, I’m scrolling content I actually enjoy consuming.
I’ve unfollowed (and blocked, because I swear some creators are paying the powers that be to appear in my feed, no matter how many times I hit ‘Not Interested’) the people that make me feel like shit whom I don’t know in real life. Muted those whom I do know in real life, you know, because… unfollowing someone can become a bit of an elephant in the room when you see them IRL (it shouldn’t be because social media literally isn’t real, but I digress and maybe we can talk about that another day).
Perhaps that’s being soft. Maybe it’s just being precious with my time and attention span.
And anyway, who are you to upset me on the phone that I pay for?
I’ve cleared my Following list of just about everyone I could who doesn’t bring me joy in some form or fashion.
It’s, like, almost exclusively made up of people who crochet or bake or read or write or wear cool outfits.
People who I’d happily lend my free time and attention.
I’ve become aware of how negative my self-talk used to be–how, just a few months ago, when I spent most of my time alone, my thoughts about myself were almost exclusively negative.
Now that I have friends that *ahem* don’t suck–friends who, if they talked about themselves the way I used to talk about myself, I would freak! out! my internal monologue has become far less plagued with negativity. I actually just think about myself a lot less, in general. Way less ‘I wish I could change everything about myself’ and way more, you know, literally anything else.
My free time is filled with friends and hobbies and books and plans that are far more entertaining and fulfilling and make me feel a happiness so deep in my bones that I don’t even crave the dopamine hit that comes from a quick scroll of my feed; I don’t find comfort in the puffy gray raincloud of my own negativity.
But, alas, I am human, so in the empty minutes before my friends arrive for our dinner reservation or while I’m in the Uber home from meeting them for drinks– yes, I will scroll. Yes, I will sit with my own thoughts. But I won’t be scrolling through anything that makes me feel bad about myself. I won’t be thinking about all of the things I wish I could change about myself.
I don’t have the time.