By Sammy Ginsberg
I’ve been journaling as usual and some themes keep coming up. It’s all relationships related. My social anxiety is super high!!
Not in like a fun weed kind of way. Well actually yep. In the weed kind of way.
Because I am doing social media professionally and as volunteer work for nonprofits, and I’m performing and being more public – my social anxiety is high, as well as the fact that I’ve been going for coffees with new people and doing new thing.
Whenever one does new things or builds new relationships, it requires a lot of risk taking. Things will inevitably come up and mistakes will be made. The limits of the relationship will be found. Conflict will happen and you will have to learn with this new person how to navigate it, and either build trust by being able to work through it or not.
I went through my phone and wrote down on a spreadsheet all the people I’d texted since March 2024 and it was 186 people. That was just text. I know I’ve emailed, whatsapped, and instagrammed even more people – and that doesn’t even include the three sets of students I’ve worked with and the two schools and all my in person relationships!!!
I realized that is probably why I am so anxious as well as the root cause of my burn out and feelings of social isolation and being misunderstood.
Many studies show that the human brain can really only maintain relationships/ care about 100 people. More than that – and it struggles. I have been maintaining relationships with over that for years!! Just being a teacher means maintaining about 120 relationships. And that’s like – the amount of people I see every day and share the same room with and thus really need to be on good terms with / who define me as ‘good at my job’ – have the power and influence over my health and safety needs.
And that was just the kids! Not talking about the colleagues at my school, my ELA department, my administrators!
And not even talking about the people I need as friends, partners, family! Government officials, people in my neighborhood especially when fires and earthquakes and ICE raids and protests.
And that’s just the people I need in my current chapter in this fixed location!
There are friends and relationships from different years all around the world that I am trying to maintain because they were a critical part of my support system at that time in my life and I love and care deeply for them. A few with unresolved conflicts, a few with confusing expectations – showing up to someone’s wedding that you haven’t talked to one-on-one in months and are meeting your boyfriend for the first time, and you feel like you barely know them anymore, except that you do know them so well and are one of their closest friends? Hence why you’re one of 7 friends at the wedding.
The dissociative element of this is astounding.
Also trying to organize projects with people and it’s all done through phone and text and zoom instead of in person, instead of just being on the same campus or office as them. Instead of these external structures and cultural norms naturally allowing you to meet and chat and talk and work through conflict and build trust.
Instead it must all be intentional, but all be designed. Requires effort. Requires money. Requires a car. Requires an iPhone, a computer, text message, an Instagram account, whatsapp, a facebook!
And now this is my “job” again – my way of making a living in society. All because I care about people and relationships especially friendship, family, neighbors, community and want to effectively communicate with people- and because it is the 21st century, these are the tools that we use and must use.
And some people are better than others at using these tools!
At the same time, it is a blend of in person and digital interaction – these relationships. And the anxiety of that is high!
The gaps between sharing and a response are so long!! Or unsatisfying. What does it mean to just LOOK at someone’s story versus hearting it versus making a comment!??
Or to see what your friends did that weekend and to know that you were not invited. And to always know what was being done while you weren’t there, but then to also feel this need to share what you were doing without them too.
It doesn’t feel like an invitation. It doesn’t feel like community. It feels like exclusion. It feels like bragging.
I just went on Instagram and it all felt like too much! This incoherent narrative that is traumatizing and polarizing and stimulates both FOMO and curiosity.
I keep imagining creating this post that says, these are my boundaries with social media and these are the cultural norms! Of its uses. Who do I need to know how I’m using it and why?
I want to leave it and at the same time, I have made beautiful connections on it. It is the only way I have learned about opportunities through smaller orgs. It is how I created the festival!! How can we use it as a tool? Limit its dark side?
I want to organize an event! Or at least just interview key people about it. I gotta set my boundaries.
I keep overthinking them. Well there are so many to have!!! And so many channels to maintain with different relationships!!
I have:
- 1,119 Instagram Followers
- 1,049 LinkedIn Followers
- 1,939 Facebook Friends
Followers? Friends? Sooo many connections on these profiles.
These are all real people. Real relationships!
And that’s just my personal network, only digital relationships. And that’s small! I’m a micro-influencer. Many people have 10,000 or 50,000 or millions!!! Isn’t that just fucking crazy!!
Like quantified and used to sell! SELL? OR is it community?
Ive been calling my work – community engagement – rather than PR and marketing. I’m not trying to sell. I’m trying to engage the community! It sounds more pure. It is more pure.
Depends on the metric for success.
Okay, I gotta post on Instagram for CSUN Writing Project and then I have a Zoom for the Small Business Association, and then I have a coffee with Katya from Writing Gets Lonely!! WOO!
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