Starting Again

Since we can fall and get back up again as many times as needed in this life, I'm happy to be starting again. I want this space to feel intimate, raw, fun, and inspiring - for myself and anyone tuning in. This week's ramble talks about the complexity of my relationship to social media, overcoming obstacles & limiting beliefs that kept me from sharing, and pushing myself to do all the scary things. 

You can watch the video version on YouTube at www.youtube.com/@RachelLeedom and come hang out on Instagram or Substack. 

Transcript

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Hello. I feel like that's always the hardest. For whatever reason, the hardest moment with ever making a video for me is the greeting. Not that I need a greeting, and I think that in and of itself is just clearly something in my brain that tells me I need a greeting, like an on-ramp. I need to somehow hop onto this train to tell myself there's no getting off the train. Basically, I am attempting to formulate this habit because the periods of I get okay, two different things. Periods of my life where I've been consistent with vocalizing and sharing have felt really good. And as soon as you fall off, just like going to the gym, then it feels really hard to get back on. So we're using this space as a way to put in the reps and get back to it purely because it's fun and also because it's inherently vulnerable and really uncomfortable and requires putting ourselves out there for really no particular reason at this moment in time in my life. I have nothing that I'm like, there's no goal attached to this account right now. I am simply feeling like an urge to create because whenever I'm not creating, shocker, I don't feel so good. And I am clocking that and I'm bringing it back because outside of all of the noise around social media, I've just always felt very good. I felt very good when I am just purely staying in my lane and acknowledging or admitting to myself that I like creating for social media. I like I don't know why that feels like a very bad, loaded thing in today's world. I totally understand why it feels that way. But really, when I break that down, it's kind of silly because it also feels like the more like charge we're giving it in a negative way, I don't know. It's just like the more we're idle idolizing it or giving it power that it just doesn't really need to have because social media doesn't take up that much time of my life. I'm very fortunate to have pretty strict boundaries, I guess, with it that now have been habituated. So I don't really think about it. I scroll maybe four posts down and then I register. Oh, I'm scrolling. I don't want to do that. I watch a handful of my stories that I want to really want to watch, and then for anyone else who like think of, oh, I want to check in on that person, then I go look them up and I watch their story very intentionally. I feel really good with my feed, everything is just like heavily nature, travel, astrology, animals, so many animals, all of the ocean. It's a lot of people who really inspire me. It's quotes. It just feels like such a good motivating place to be in because of how I have uh curated it. And that being said, screen time and scrolling is still scrolling, and so I tried to be very mindful, just I think all the studies that I have read as far as what it's doing to our brain, just with the actual act of scrolling. That's where I think I've put that little boundary in of saying if I want to go type in somebody's page or name and go look at their account, then that to me at least creates a semi-different pathway. And it I have to dig for it. So it it proves to me that like their content is worth me digging for. And that feels good. It feels like oh, this is a relationship with someone's own creation that means something to me that I I want to go put in that extra effort. So it's nice to make it a little less th mindless and a little bit more mindful. So all that to say is like I have a pretty good feeling with social media, despite the fact that it's still being on a device, and when I'm working on a device all the time, then my eyes just start to feel very stingy and burnt out. I've noticed the un dry eye issue clocking for me lately. That's not fun. But that being said, I just think over the last 10-15 years, I have created various social media accounts, both for different creative projects I was doing and for many of my clients back when I used to do social media management. And I really had fun with it because at the end of the day, if I do just look at it like a blank neutral space where we get to contribute writing images or photos and videos and things that again we are opting and vulnerably sharing with the world and creating an aesthetic or an experience that we get to bring people into the little digital world. I think why I've always loved being a web designer and my website work because I am building a digital home for somebody's website and welcoming people into that. That is really a fun experience for me. I enjoy it. But I just think lately the noise with social media has been really loud. I know a lot of my friends are getting off of it just full on, um, some partially, and I very much support that. And I on the one hand do not want to contribute from the morals of it. I don't want to contribute to something that's making other people feel anxious, stressed, that's triggering comparison. There's a part of me that says, Oh, I don't want to be a part of that. And then there's the other part of me that says that's essentially me trying to control somebody else's emotional world or reaction, and that's not my responsibility. We are all adults who choose to opt into social media or we choose not to opt into it. That is fully our decision to make. And anyone who I choose to follow, I do so very intentionally, and again, I want to be there. I feel like it adds value to my life to peek into what they're doing and see their world because it's just so widely and vastly expanded. My mindset, my belief system, my habits and behaviors, like the way I talk to myself, books I've read, podcasts I've listened to, places I've visited, things that I believed I could do, just literally things I believed I could go after because of people who I have watched for years and years and years on end, and watching the very real, bumpy struggles of what they've gone through, I think, from just the role model aspect or positive side of comparison, that really feels nice, I guess. That's not always a bad thing to have mentors and that pseudo big sister kind of person in your life saying, Hey, I know it's hard, you can do it too. If I can do it, and I can fumble all over the place here, don't expect it to be perfect and very much expect it to be messy, but you can absolutely do it if you're willing to just be vulnerable and show up and put yourself out there and stick with it. And I can see all the times in my life when I started to move in that direction and I believed it and I was doing it and I was making progress, and then I fell victim, as we all do at different points in our life, of hitting a wall. And once I hit that wall, then the negative voices slide back in, and then I'm thrown back into oh I don't want to be on social media, I don't want to contribute to that, that's somehow beneath me. It is just creating negativity for other people, and I don't want to again just feed that in the cosmic sense. I don't want to be on screen, this is overwhelming, this doesn't feel good. Why does anyone need to hear anything that I have to say? And watch myself slowly shrink. And I'm by no means saying that social media is the only way to not shrink, because that's definitely not true, but I do really believe that it is such a beautiful tool for us that didn't exist 50 years ago. Were there a bunch of health benefits to it not existing? Probably. But are there also other benefits that have come out of social media? I believe so. So with most things, moderation and intention, I think. Looking back at any of my writing with uh the conscious masochists, what was that, six years ago, something like that, a long time ago? My whole kind of thesis that I was exploring with any of that writing was just the idea of saying, I'm struggling to get over my addiction to self-harm. I don't know how to find a way out of this, and everything I keep trying doesn't work. I just hit wall after wall and I feel like I'm pendulum swinging, versus essentially saying the bridge I needed out of that for me at that time was an allowance and basically giving myself permission to say I have a self-destructive impulse inside of me right now. I would love to flip a switch and make it go away, but I can't do that, and that's okay. What I do need to do is just find a way to work with that feeling and give it some kind of outlet and redirect the energy so that I can trick my brain and my ego and my wounds into like thinking that I'm doing the thing that I'm itching to do without actually doing it. So again, essentially that kind of worked as far as bridging me out of that situation. I'm going off on a whole tangent. That doesn't necessarily back up my point, even of social media, because I don't think this is an addiction I'm trying to personally wean off of. But I think the essence of what I got to at that point in time was just saying that looking at any vice with intention and moderation, things don't get out of control. And it's usually all of our underlying subconscious beliefs, wounds, things we have not held, acknowledged, dealt with that create that restlessness or that tension and that really just like wobbly boundaryless operating system within us that therefore collapses into an addiction. So I've certainly navigated that. And I guess it's really nice now to see a difference. It's empowering, I guess, just to know that that's actually possible, that I could go from where it was years ago to where I'm at with it now, where I feel like it's just kind of there. Maybe akin to if I wanting to have a glass of wine at dinner with my family. I don't find myself wanting to do that. I don't find myself right now in a season of wanting to drink. I don't prohibit myself from drinking. I'm not saying that I can't drink. I just don't find myself, again, craving it or wanting it. So it's nice with social media to have a little bit of that stopping checkpoint in my head that says, do I really want to pick this up right now? Do I want to keep scrolling? If I've gone down three posts and the awareness clicks in, do I need to keep doing this? Is there something I'm looking for? And if so, can I go seek that one thing out, that one post, that one person, and just bypass this mental trap that they have created for us? So I don't know. Who knows? In the end, as I keep sharing, I may end up leaving Instagram or things like that behind. I have no idea. I have really no idea where this is going. I just know that I feel better when I'm pushing myself to do vulnerable, scary things. That seems to be a very important part of me uh feeling good in the world and being my strongest best self. So anytime I hit a wall that says, that's vulnerable, I don't want to do that. I'm kind of just nudging myself off the cliff, loving mama bird shoving myself out of the nest, saying that that's why we're gonna do it. Because at the end of the day, none of this really matters. No one's gonna remember this, probably minutes, hours, days later. But I will, as far as compound effect of what sitting down to write a post and just share when I may feel initially burnt out. I want to write, I want to write really bad, but I also don't want to write and I feel tired. And then usually I just give in to the fatigued feeling and I don't write. Every time I lean the other way and I push past that and I say, I just feel like writing, I don't even know what I necessarily want to write about. I just want to write and I lean into that, I feel so much better. So same thing goes with using the voice box because this, for whatever reason, has continuously haunted me as far as a belief system that I'm not a great speaker, I don't like talking, I'm not comfortable talking. If only I could write out my thoughts and feelings, then they'll be all polished and perfect and edited, and it won't be so raw as the talking. But I also really do enjoy talking. And if anyone knew how much time I spent just I live alone and wandering around my place, having full-on out loud conversations to myself talking, they probably think they're looking inside the window of a loony bin. I don't know. But I love it. I do love to talk, and I think that in and of itself is just a nice revelation to admit to myself. Do I also have the the part of my brain that says this is self-indulgent to waste people's time with my jargon, given that it's a little aimless right now and I don't really know where any of this is going. Yes, that voice is there as well, and we welcome it, and maybe it is self-indulgent, and maybe it can be that, and it can still be helpful and healing and productive, and we'll just let it be, whatever it is. So I think I'm just gonna leave it there. What I am gonna do with this, and I guess essentially if I have a plan, which we will see, it could change tomorrow. But I'm feeling to have potential long rambles like this end up on YouTube, and I can snip it out the audio and essentially place that on my Adventurous Thoughts podcast. So if that's where you're listening to this, um, once I do all that fancy editing, then hello and welcome and thank you for listening. But again, right now I think this is just a warm-up in real-time, out loud tuning of the instrument, and we will see where it goes. But it feels really good to be pushing myself to do things that are uncomfortable and scary and vulnerable, to be following the impulse that says I want to create and I want to express, call it the Leo Midheaven uh in me. I know I am a born performer and I love performing. I just want to perform constructively. I want to perform intentionally where it's appropriate to do so, and for whatever reason, feel like social media apparently, or YouTube or a podcast are my outlets right now for being a little performative in a light-hearted, fun way, balanced somehow with authenticity and just being my weird, ambitious, dreamy, strange self. So, all of that is to say thank you. And if you made it all the way through this, that's I don't even know what to say about that. I'm just gonna say thank you. So