Disconnecting & Reconnecting

I just completed a one week media cleanse where I disconnected from ALL social media sites, I even posted about it on Facebook and took the app off my phone to keep myself accountable. It was an experiment to see how Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest (those are the primary sites I use) really serve me.

So what did I discover when I “disconnected” from Facebook and social media for a week? I reconnected with the world around me and the world inside me in new ways. I realized that true human face to face interaction is completely more satisfying when I have not been on Facebook. It seems so obvious and simple yet the experience of it was quite profound. I felt calmer and less reactive as the world no longer “relied” on my next pithy status update or as I eagerly awaited the instant gratification that comes when someone “likes” my posts. I used e-mail less. My mind was able to slow down a bit and focus on the present moment and the simple of joy of giving someone my full attention. As the story-teller and story-gatherer that I am, I will share my two favorite stories of connection about my week off social media.

Story 1: Connecting with the Internal World: The Gardner and the Plant

One day, as I was packing boxes, I felt really lonely and sad. My friend had been over helping me pack and had just left. Another wave of grief about all the changes and letting go that I have recently undergone. Rather than take a 15 minute Facebook break (since that wasn’t an option), I decided to take a meditation break and connect with what was really going on inside. In one short meditation session, a vision came to me. I saw myself as a Gardner digging up a smaller version of me, like a root vegetable version of Jana. My “veggie” self was crying and in pain because it hurt to be uprooted. As the Gardener I could soothe this plant and nurture it, I had the wisdom and foresight to inform her of her new home, where she can re-root back into the deep, dark Earth. I realized in this meditation that I am both the Gardener and the garden, the Planter and the plant. What a vivid visual picture of how my higher self is always caring for the grounded, physical “Jana” self.

Story 2: Connecting with the External World: Love Thy Neighbor

I sold my photographic work the past two Sundays as part of a moving sidewalk sale. It was sort of an afterthought. My mind was so caught up in the move that I didn’t have time to really prepare or stress, I just showed up, took my work downstairs and created a “Pop-up” Jana Carrey Photography store of sorts.  I was delighted with the reception and interest my work received from total strangers but even more so I was relaxed in the present moment (no face buried in my phone). This allowed me to create connections with many neighbors that I had never met or even seen before.  I met one neighbor named Matilda* (name changed for her privacy) for the first time and our interaction really touched me. She purchased one of my photographs of Panajachel, Western Guatemala. (I would include it but my hard-drives are boxed up, I included two of the most similar images I could find to give you a feel for the imagery). She had grown up in Southern Guatemala and she recognized the young girls in traditional traje walking with baskets on their head in my images. She was drawn to the image because it reminded her of home, in particular her grandmother who is an Indigenous (Mayan) Guatemalan. She told me stories of her youth growing up on a ranch with her family and I told her of my time living in Guatemala. Then we connected deeper around the experience of growing up in the LA area and missing the spacious, more laid back ways of So Cal versus the buzz of San Francisco. She told me stories of how her family relocated to San Francisco to be closer to UCSF because her daughter has serve immunodeficiency syndrome. (I kept quite about losing my brother to cancer and my work as part of Envisioning Normality, but silently felt the connection go another level deeper).

We parted ways as she suggested I photograph the beauty of Placita Olvera (Olvera Street), perhaps so I can send her images of another home that she misses. I felt such a deep appreciation for the world and its people in that moment. Photography as a vehicle to share stories and connect with a deeper essence of humanity. The whole reason I picked up the camera in the first place.  I felt a strange regret that living in the city I am surrounded by so many wonderful neighbors, so few I ever got to really know and made a silent vow to myself to work on that when I moved to LA. To show up as more of a presence in my living, breathing community.

I do not feel that social media is inherently wrong. I recognize that each platform is a unique and potentially valuable tool meant to serve, not the other way around. I just want to be the one in conscious control of how I use my time and how I connect with both the internal and external world around me. And I know how tempting (and habit forming) it is to connect through the mediated world of our electronic devices.

I’m curious to know your thoughts on social media platforms and how they impact your life? As always please send any comments my way via jana@janacarrey.com or include them in the comment box below. Thank you for reading!