I’m feeling a little lost

Hey hotties, 

My 11 year old kid has really been into horror/suspenseful movies in the last handful of months and its been kind of tough navigating what I'm ok with him consuming. He was telling me that all of his friends in his middle school are watching Squid Game. And that he's behind! And he has to catch up with them.

We watched a couple episodes together before I finally called it quits and hoped I didn't traumatize him too much with all the violence. I decided to put on Lost. I had watched a few episodes with my parents when I was in high school but couldn't get past the first season, after being frustrated when they would watch a couple episodes without me and I had no idea what was going on. Now, rewatching it sometimes I don't know what's going on because my 5 year old is singing a song in my ear or the dogs are getting into trouble or I have to cook something and nobody wants to pause it for me!!

 In Lost, a group of people are plane wrecked on a tropical island. In the second season they come to find out that they are part of a social experiment and that they are being monitored but they don't know to what extent. They have to do certain mundane things or "something bad will happen". Maybe the world will end. 

 I've had a lot of interest in leaving social media and some days it feels like I’m committing career suicide and that something bad is definitely going to happen. Other days it feels like I’m vacation and I don’t know what to do with myself. The anxieties of what my peers are up to or what they think of me starts to slip away and instead I'm doing things like watching Lost and drinking hot chocolate or listening to records & organizing family photos. Or I’m driving to a thrift store I’ve been to a hundred times but I’m challenging myself to do it without google maps.

 

  I joined a group of artists and small business owners who meet once a month or so to talk about getting off or away from social media. We've been talking about our individual strengths and how we can help each other out. We are beginning to organize in person events and I'm so stoked about that!

I've always struggled with social anxiety and while tattooing has helped me tremendously to find my voice and feel comfortable meeting and talking to new people; I still struggle in smaller group settings. I feel awkward and shy sometimes. Sometimes, my words refuse to formulate correctly and everyone's probably thinking I'm an idiot.

When people go around in a circle and say their name and what their favorite color is I literally feel like my head is going to explode.

I felt the tension and excitement in the air as a dear friend took the reins of the meeting and gently lead us into new areas of conversation. I felt the bubbling feeling inside of me of nobody knows what they're doing (and thats ok) and how hard it is to organize artists/small business owners who are so used to working for themselves. 

    One of the things I shared with the group is that I think we should look to past organizations/people who successfully built community for artists pre-social media.            What does come to mind is the hippie communes of the 1960's and 1970's and how pumped up people were to abandon capitalism and jump on the literal bandwagon to explore free love and life in the countryside. More often than not, people reverted to sexist gender roles, children were neglected when their parents had to toil in the fields and the dreams they had were eventually crushed by economic failure and power imbalances within the group. I was a big fan of “Spiritual Midwifery” when I was pregnant with my first son and giving birth on a commune sounded so cool to me when I was a teenager. 

There was so much passion when people joined in- The dream of a different future was so appealing. It's easy to lose the plot of what we're doing when we haven't seen it done successfully before. In the meeting I was feeling a little lost. I don't know what all of my strengths are. But I'll work on it because the promise of a new future outside of social media is still very sexy to me. 

Big love

Bella

 

Bonus photo of the hippie art I just saw at community acupuncture 

:)