The "Right" Amount of Social Media

"Part of being creative is learning how to protect your freedom. That includes freedom from avarice." ~ Hugh Macleod

I don't watch news anymore.

I know, that sounds silly, especially from a college professor. Shouldn't every human being living in the modern world care about what are happening around them? That seems to be an argument hard to dispute. If I were younger I wouldn't have been strong enough to say otherwise.

Before I had my first child, yes, I watched news everyday. By the way, I watched movies, and I played computer games. (I never ever occupied myself with cell phones, though; I'm still using a dumb phone). Even during the time both my husband and I were occupied by a baby, we still tried to catch up with the world. Now if I tell you, I don't have time for that, you may say, you can't work all the time. Right, every day after work, I do have certain time to spend at my discretion, but I want to save it for something more meaningful, something more important to me.

News are about others, unless we are celebrities. I care about other people, and I care about mankind, which is often a theme in my books. Meanwhile, I'm approaching 40. However optimistic, there are only that many years left ahead of me. I have a demanding day job, and I love it. Apart from that, I'd like to see something staying and growing with time, such as more books on Amazon and more readers following my books. And there are only that many hours each day.

Time is not the only reason for me to cut from social media. How many happy news do you watch every day? Scientific discoveries might be the only exception. The majority is about tragedies, and I'm a sentimental person. It simply messes up my mind, disturbing my writing as well as my work. It makes me feel that I live in a world that lacks security. Bad things can happen to me at any time. Well, that's not untrue, but it makes harder for us to live a happy life with that notion in our minds.

Even forums that are highly related to work and writing can be disturbing, because we are constantly comparing ourselves with others. Yes, there are a lot of writers, a lot of researchers ahead of us, but they are also in the senior and established stages of their lives. Everything has a beginning. We learn from people who can serve as our role models, but that exposure has to be limited so that we don't intimidate ourselves at the same time.

During the five years I wrote my first novel, The Starlight Fortress, I had no contact with any of those forums. I didn't refresh my Amazon Author Page every few minutes to find out how many more sales had been generated. I didn't wake up at midnight fretting about work unfinished. I simply wrote the story at night. I simply conducted research during the day. I might have been slow, but the progress was steady. There was little disturbance, and rarely did I blame myself. Why should I? I was working hard, doing the correct things, and that should be satisfactory enough.

We get so many goodies from the social media. I love it, but I also know that too much sugar will ruin a cake. Everything has to be the right amount. As technology develops, we could safely predict that the amount of social information will continue to explode. Shall we let others determine what we do, what we think, and how we feel? Shall we let a few high-tech companies choose our lifestyles? I know what I want, and make choices for my life.