I know many of you have noticed that I've not been posting my crochet on my socials so much lately so I thought I'd just give a little update of where I'm at and why I've not been as active as usual
Life's been a little heavy lately, if you are familiar with the term or have experienced being part of the 'sandwich generation' you'll have a good idea of where I'm going with this!
I'm 50 this year and I've got a teen in her GCSE years (doing great and continually making us extremely proud of the young person she is becoming!)
I also have ageing relatives. Parts of my family are very complex and very challenging and have been all my life. It's very difficult at times, it's overwhelming and it has taken it's toll on my mental health recently.
Usually my crochet would be what I reach for to calm my mind and provide escapism but aside from the lack of spare time I've had lately I've just kinda lost my enthusiasm for it a little this year, there's a few reasons for this......
Like many of us I am starting to really see the detrimental effects social media is having on society and our wellbeing. The way the algorithms feed us things that we really don't need to be seeing, the constant ragebait and the elevated entitlement and unrealistic expectations that people seem to have developed.
I'm quite introvert however I'm not shy, I have no trouble approaching and speaking with people when the occasion arises, I just don't seek out big crowds, big social events, etc. I much prefer to be in my home space, familiarity, routine. When we got married we did it in secret just us and our witnesses and I'm much happier blending in than standing out! So I'm just not suited to producing the kind of content expected on social media these days, you just won't see me filming myself and talking about myself in videos as it's just not my way of doing things. I'm also not a slave to social media so if I don't want to post then I just don't......I couldn't care less about algorithms and numbers!
When I started posting images of my crochet back in 2012 I think it was I didn't expect so many people to be so interested in it. I didn't actively seek out thousands of followers, it's just been a steady organic growth over many years.
Having this large following comes with challenges. I'm just an average women living in Suffolk with all the usual stuff going on behind the scenes that many of us have. I'm not an 'influencer' and I don't spend my time online 24/7. I just do a bit of crochet in my spare time and share what I'm making when I feel like it.
I try to provide all the information about what I'm making in all sorts of places.......my social media profiles, my blog, my website, my You Tube channel for example and I started the blog so that I could compile it all in one place making it easier for people to find things. Unfortunately many people choose not to look for or read the info provided and expect an instant response to their comments and sometimes when I don't provide that instantly an assumption is made that I don't care and I receive unkind, unnecessary messages. This has become quite common in the last couple of years and really increased this year for some reason, it didn't happen so much before that so it has made me question if it's worth continuing to post.
When I post these days I have to brace myself a bit because it's more common now for some people to want to provoke, catch me out or insult me. It's just how social media seems to operate now and it can be exhausting. I'm getting much better at not reacting and walking away and of course blocking but it's still not nice when a stranger chooses to be unnecessarily unkind and when that is happening more frequently it does start to grind you down a bit!
Social media in general has become exhausting! I deleted my personal social media a few weeks back too and this has been very liberating, 10/10 highly recommend! The people I genuinely want to know about and keep in contact with I already do so in real life so Facebook for example has become redundant to me. What started back in the mid 2000s as a fun way for me to reconnect with old friends and colleagues and distant family members has just become a sea of AI spam, endless adverts and ragebait........perpetual negativity. It's just not healthy.
So with the pressures of being part of the sandwich generation and the pressures of social media as a whole I have had to really think about how I use my time and what I use it for so that I can not only protect my mental health but in turn be the best mum and role model to my daughter that I possibly can. This is extremely important to me given my family background.
I'll still post my crochet on socials from time to time when I want to but I hope this update helps to manage expectations of the level of interaction and content you will get from me going forward.
Faye