You really hit the nail on the head. OVER AND OVER AGAIN. I have had a piece called "The Birth of Digital Domesticity" brewINg IN my drafts for a few months Now, about some similar threads you have woven IN Here. Thank you for INspirINg me to revisit that piece and Breathe Life back INto it. The irony of Women Who advocate for a slow Life while harnessINg the rapid, ever-churnINg World of social media, does not evade me. The tension BEtween message and method IS undeniable - yet so many people don't see it. One cannot Truly BE Present while caught IN the endless cycle of performance. It's as simple as that.
I’ve fallen for it myself, until I stepped into true embodiment, and realized there in fact, is no way the two can coexist. Thank you for reading and I truly hope you do touch on the subject in your own words, the women need more light shed! 🫶🏼🙏🏼
Yes! It's being in the moment rather than taking a video or picture. I am grateful that smartphones were absent from early motherhood. I was in it entirely. What a gift.
Carly OH MY GOODNESS! This is so freaking good. I was JUST thinking to write something like this and I’m damn glad I didn’t because you said it all! I have so often wondered “how are people who have ‘slow and intentional living’ in their bios actually living this life AND creating content???? It makes zero sense. As someone who has this in my bio, I post like once a week and even that is a lot. As much as I desire to connect, write, and help along the trend of living better more nourishing lives, is posting on the internet really accomplishing that?
Yes! Leading by example is showing up on the internet less, in my opinion. I understand the desire to want to build community, but often I feel that too is used as leverage to just gain attention and following.
This is the space I sit in each week as I figure out how to meet my creative brand without undermining the integrity of my real life.
Ironically, because we do lead a slow life — the gardening, the cooking, the low-tox home, the connected parents, the walking to school and few extra curricular activities — I simply don't have time to stage and document it. My background is wellness, movement and personal growth and I can sometimes feel that it's all quite co-opted and ick.
I love that you're in search of "authentic existence" and that you understand that can't be done performatively. <3
Maintaining that integrity while also curating for the internet is quite difficult. I admire your awareness of this and intentionality in keeping that balance. I think it’s a struggle all creators can relate to.
I find this topic so interesting. Is it possible to have a slow, simple life while running a business and raising kids? I do want that life. I purposely curate my life to nourish me and my nervous system. The comparison issue creeps in when I am on social media. Since the beginning of the year, I have been off of it. Substack is the place I come for creativity and connection. I am trying to stay in my lane and stop looking outside for inspiration.
I would argue no. A business you can have, a content creators life you can have, but creating content to the degree that they do, nope.Not and have that life style and veneer of success. I am on some of their internal groups, I learned there is a lot of “ self promotion “ within the groups, format sharing and “templates” , links to underpaid “ assistants” on fiver who actually write the posts etc etc. it’s all a farce designed to get you to click that affiliate link.
It’s definitely a challenge that is for sure! I’ve been of socials as well for a week now and it has been so liberating! I feel a massive influx of peace, inspiration, and grounding.
I love the idea of a slow life and I crave those beautiful, present moments with my kids. I love homebirth and I'll admit I'm in love with linen pants. But the internet curation robs us, especially women, who are pulled into the trap. We are not meant to split our womanhood in half, to exist fully in this internet world yet fully present to our own messy realities. I am consciously choosing to create out of inspired action. If it feels hustle and hard, I won't. We are freest when we keep aligning with that little whisper inside. I love to connect and create but I know it's done best when I'm in my highest state, not out of desperation, hustle, and quick gains. Thank you for this!
This is key..." aligning with that little whisper inside". Thank you for stating it clearly. Listening to our intuition is the most incredible power we have as women.
So many fuck yes points here Carly. I’ve felt so much of this and quite frankly I feel for the kids, when living becomes showcasing, as you said, it’s robbing our children of our attention and authenticity
I always feel for the kids. Every time I remember we are the last generation to have grown up with parents not glued to devices it makes my stomach turn. It’s only the beginning of seeing these negative effects on attachment.
I do not wonder what will happen. I know. I worked in day cares. Those kids who are there from opening til closing and whose parents admit they give their kids ipads when they get home to occupy them, display the same characteristics in children in foster care - all caused by lack of attachment. THE #1 cause of violence is lack of attachment. Not fear mongering. It’s just a fact. Rarely giving kids attention is even more damaging than physical abuse. We need attention (even negative attention) to develop and these kids growing up with parents glued to phones and careers are starving for it.
Ugh. Yes! I feel guilty every single time my 4 month old daughter even sees me on my phone for a moment! Even to just take a picture of her! She always looks at me &/or my phone like, what the heck is she doing with that thing?? I actually often think about how sad it is for all these babies/children who will grow up seeing devices in everyone's hands, everywhere they go. It's honestly a very sad, dystopian-esque reality. 🥴
I wanted so badly to get my Instagram going and I realized I was robbing from my daughter’s childhood and my own motherhood. And for a piddly following.
I completely agree. There was one mom who I followed, who seems quite genuine and lovely. But — I initially thought her content was sweet until I (a mom of children of similar ages) started to think more about the logistics behind the adorable videos. And the effect on her kids? And also the effect it was having on me and how I felt about my own version of motherhood. Just suddenly realized how “off” the whole thing really is.
THIS was the driving force behind me writing this, you just encapsulated my inner dialogue. I’m thankful that anyone can see through it. I for a brief moment tried to explore it, and I was way more irritated/overstimulated with my kids. Immediate shut down. Log off. Real life.
"Because promoting a lifestyle, of any sort, is not actually living. It’s showcasing." There it is! Yep, I've been thinking about all of this for a while. I homeschool three kids and I'm not a homesteading mom. But man, just staying on top of their education and nutrition consumes most of my time. A real slow life is too busy to film. Great post!
Yes! I also think it strange to sell "get off the internet" on the internet ha! I've shared my experience with cutting out most social media, but I see others actually creating ONLINE communities to stay connected to others who are off social media.
It's so hard to stay off completely, it's like this brand new thing has already been wired deeply into our cultural DNA. I think you are right about the needing to seen. I realized this as my root cause for my relationship issues with social media. The more I work on healing that, the less content I put out!
I took struggle to even churn out one article per month here, but I'm also not prioritizing it. I took love all the crunchy things, it's a movement for a reason, and cooking and outside time and no screentime fill upy days.
This is fascinating. I love this perspective. The people I know actually living a slow life are too busy touching grass to ever pull out a ring light are you kidding! Thank you for this piece. I’m exploring my attachment to my “hustle culture” life here: https://katyspalding.substack.com/p/the-grief-to-anti-girlboss-pipeline
Yes I agree so heartily. We’ve been sick the past few weeks so we’ve been watching hiking videos and it’s beautiful but I mostly find myself thinking about how the guy must be hiking twice as much to set up the camera and how fake it feels. So I’ve given up on that. And I’ve had people tell me I should be a crochet influencer and yeah… no thank you.
Haha!! I love this! I always think I’m crazy for “not having time” to create and edit and format YouTube videos and written posts etc…and then I remember they’re all just liars 🤣
Love your reflection on this. I’m very much into this life style, and I would love to inspire people to do the same. To make their own food and clothes just to get away from all the toxins that are in everything these days.
But I don’t know yet how to inspire people without jumping into the hustle of online creation. And that doesn’t resonate with me.
Love this post. I think there is a real movement away from influencer culture. It’s exhausting for the “consumer”, I can’t begin to imagine what it’s like for “creators.”
The real revolution, of course, will never be televised.
I loved this so much. I have been thinking of this for a long time. And I am someone who promoted the slow living on Instagram. Which I do live by in my own way, but I am in no way able to keep up with those who 'claim' to be fully slow/detached/regulated from the modern fast life. If you have kids - your life is busy - that is just a given! I actually just unfollowed a slow living writer because she was living this life but without children and living in the middle of nowhere and also doesn't work. It was very unlike my life and i don't know why somehow thought my life could be like hers!! ah the internet...
I also did this for a while! Until it crashed me. Being neuro spicy.. that content creation road is a slippery slope especially on platforms like insta. It caused me so much irritability. I had to full stop. Thanks for sharing!
“Your phone, ring light, tripod, following you around all day, while you find the right angle, lighting, and moment to capture. Then you find and take the time to cut, edit, add voice overs, music, captions, the lot. All to present a little cutesy video of you frolicking in the yard with your kids”. This is so grossly inauthentic.
Any content can get annoying if it's what the internet shows you on your feed all the time. But if sharing pictures of the petunias to free music on youtube is the difference between their family geting to mostly live that life, and mom having to go to work in an office while the kids rot in public schools... I'm all for the petunias. I mean, I'm all for the petunias anyway, because I love flowers, but... I'm also for them in principal in that case.And I'm sure lots of people trying to live that life get demoralized by the rude people who look down on them for it, and think they're all crazy hippies and hillbillies, so I'm guessing it's probably also emotional support for moms trying to give their family a good life while the rest of the world loks down on her because she isn't doing what the city girls do.
Nobody likes or respects the phonies... but personally I'd rather see a million posts about home crafts, organic food or raising chickens, than a million about lip filler, cosmetics, Gucci, and some ridiculously famous woman who sings like she's drunk and ill, and is mainly only famous because she wears so little and has lots of industry advertising. I'd rather watch a man build a log cabin or heard sheep with a dog, or see a woman post her crochet projects, any day.
Can't have it both ways, guys. Either you will have the shallow crowd, or you will have the homesteaders. But whichever you chase off the internet, you will very likely end up with a feed full of the other one, so maybe ask yourself which you'd rather see before sounding the alarm about seeing too much of the other one.
You really hit the nail on the head. OVER AND OVER AGAIN. I have had a piece called "The Birth of Digital Domesticity" brewINg IN my drafts for a few months Now, about some similar threads you have woven IN Here. Thank you for INspirINg me to revisit that piece and Breathe Life back INto it. The irony of Women Who advocate for a slow Life while harnessINg the rapid, ever-churnINg World of social media, does not evade me. The tension BEtween message and method IS undeniable - yet so many people don't see it. One cannot Truly BE Present while caught IN the endless cycle of performance. It's as simple as that.
I’ve fallen for it myself, until I stepped into true embodiment, and realized there in fact, is no way the two can coexist. Thank you for reading and I truly hope you do touch on the subject in your own words, the women need more light shed! 🫶🏼🙏🏼
"there in fact, is no way the two can coexist" - you said it Sister! I appreciate your encouragement! 🫶🏼
Yes! It's being in the moment rather than taking a video or picture. I am grateful that smartphones were absent from early motherhood. I was in it entirely. What a gift.
lately i barely use my phone only to call or engage and i am out. Spending more time on my laptop
That sounds like such an interesting piece!! I’d totally read it
Hi Rachel! I’d Love for you to read it when I share it (which Will BE sometime thIS month) 🤍
Carly OH MY GOODNESS! This is so freaking good. I was JUST thinking to write something like this and I’m damn glad I didn’t because you said it all! I have so often wondered “how are people who have ‘slow and intentional living’ in their bios actually living this life AND creating content???? It makes zero sense. As someone who has this in my bio, I post like once a week and even that is a lot. As much as I desire to connect, write, and help along the trend of living better more nourishing lives, is posting on the internet really accomplishing that?
Yes! Leading by example is showing up on the internet less, in my opinion. I understand the desire to want to build community, but often I feel that too is used as leverage to just gain attention and following.
I couldn’t agree more
Also thank you for reading and supporting my rambles 😀❣️
A terrific ramble Carly. Well done!
This is the space I sit in each week as I figure out how to meet my creative brand without undermining the integrity of my real life.
Ironically, because we do lead a slow life — the gardening, the cooking, the low-tox home, the connected parents, the walking to school and few extra curricular activities — I simply don't have time to stage and document it. My background is wellness, movement and personal growth and I can sometimes feel that it's all quite co-opted and ick.
I love that you're in search of "authentic existence" and that you understand that can't be done performatively. <3
Maintaining that integrity while also curating for the internet is quite difficult. I admire your awareness of this and intentionality in keeping that balance. I think it’s a struggle all creators can relate to.
I find this topic so interesting. Is it possible to have a slow, simple life while running a business and raising kids? I do want that life. I purposely curate my life to nourish me and my nervous system. The comparison issue creeps in when I am on social media. Since the beginning of the year, I have been off of it. Substack is the place I come for creativity and connection. I am trying to stay in my lane and stop looking outside for inspiration.
I would argue no. A business you can have, a content creators life you can have, but creating content to the degree that they do, nope.Not and have that life style and veneer of success. I am on some of their internal groups, I learned there is a lot of “ self promotion “ within the groups, format sharing and “templates” , links to underpaid “ assistants” on fiver who actually write the posts etc etc. it’s all a farce designed to get you to click that affiliate link.
It’s definitely a challenge that is for sure! I’ve been of socials as well for a week now and it has been so liberating! I feel a massive influx of peace, inspiration, and grounding.
I love the idea of a slow life and I crave those beautiful, present moments with my kids. I love homebirth and I'll admit I'm in love with linen pants. But the internet curation robs us, especially women, who are pulled into the trap. We are not meant to split our womanhood in half, to exist fully in this internet world yet fully present to our own messy realities. I am consciously choosing to create out of inspired action. If it feels hustle and hard, I won't. We are freest when we keep aligning with that little whisper inside. I love to connect and create but I know it's done best when I'm in my highest state, not out of desperation, hustle, and quick gains. Thank you for this!
Absolutelyyy! 👏🏼 Thank you, Katie. Spot on.
This is key..." aligning with that little whisper inside". Thank you for stating it clearly. Listening to our intuition is the most incredible power we have as women.
So many fuck yes points here Carly. I’ve felt so much of this and quite frankly I feel for the kids, when living becomes showcasing, as you said, it’s robbing our children of our attention and authenticity
I always feel for the kids. Every time I remember we are the last generation to have grown up with parents not glued to devices it makes my stomach turn. It’s only the beginning of seeing these negative effects on attachment.
I do not wonder what will happen. I know. I worked in day cares. Those kids who are there from opening til closing and whose parents admit they give their kids ipads when they get home to occupy them, display the same characteristics in children in foster care - all caused by lack of attachment. THE #1 cause of violence is lack of attachment. Not fear mongering. It’s just a fact. Rarely giving kids attention is even more damaging than physical abuse. We need attention (even negative attention) to develop and these kids growing up with parents glued to phones and careers are starving for it.
Ugh. Yes! I feel guilty every single time my 4 month old daughter even sees me on my phone for a moment! Even to just take a picture of her! She always looks at me &/or my phone like, what the heck is she doing with that thing?? I actually often think about how sad it is for all these babies/children who will grow up seeing devices in everyone's hands, everywhere they go. It's honestly a very sad, dystopian-esque reality. 🥴
I wonder what this is doing to their development and growth. Kids should be free to be themselves, not pawns in creation content.
Exactly
I wanted so badly to get my Instagram going and I realized I was robbing from my daughter’s childhood and my own motherhood. And for a piddly following.
I completely agree. There was one mom who I followed, who seems quite genuine and lovely. But — I initially thought her content was sweet until I (a mom of children of similar ages) started to think more about the logistics behind the adorable videos. And the effect on her kids? And also the effect it was having on me and how I felt about my own version of motherhood. Just suddenly realized how “off” the whole thing really is.
THIS was the driving force behind me writing this, you just encapsulated my inner dialogue. I’m thankful that anyone can see through it. I for a brief moment tried to explore it, and I was way more irritated/overstimulated with my kids. Immediate shut down. Log off. Real life.
"Because promoting a lifestyle, of any sort, is not actually living. It’s showcasing." There it is! Yep, I've been thinking about all of this for a while. I homeschool three kids and I'm not a homesteading mom. But man, just staying on top of their education and nutrition consumes most of my time. A real slow life is too busy to film. Great post!
Yes! I also think it strange to sell "get off the internet" on the internet ha! I've shared my experience with cutting out most social media, but I see others actually creating ONLINE communities to stay connected to others who are off social media.
It's so hard to stay off completely, it's like this brand new thing has already been wired deeply into our cultural DNA. I think you are right about the needing to seen. I realized this as my root cause for my relationship issues with social media. The more I work on healing that, the less content I put out!
I took struggle to even churn out one article per month here, but I'm also not prioritizing it. I took love all the crunchy things, it's a movement for a reason, and cooking and outside time and no screentime fill upy days.
Great article!
Thank you, Becca! Well put. And an online community for off-liners? Can’t even begin to mental juggle that one.
This is fascinating. I love this perspective. The people I know actually living a slow life are too busy touching grass to ever pull out a ring light are you kidding! Thank you for this piece. I’m exploring my attachment to my “hustle culture” life here: https://katyspalding.substack.com/p/the-grief-to-anti-girlboss-pipeline
Thank you for reading! Totally agree
Yes I agree so heartily. We’ve been sick the past few weeks so we’ve been watching hiking videos and it’s beautiful but I mostly find myself thinking about how the guy must be hiking twice as much to set up the camera and how fake it feels. So I’ve given up on that. And I’ve had people tell me I should be a crochet influencer and yeah… no thank you.
It’s always when you view video content from behind the phone it’s being filmed on that makes you… wait a minute 🫠
Haha!! I love this! I always think I’m crazy for “not having time” to create and edit and format YouTube videos and written posts etc…and then I remember they’re all just liars 🤣
💀 this girl gets it. I’m over it.
Love your reflection on this. I’m very much into this life style, and I would love to inspire people to do the same. To make their own food and clothes just to get away from all the toxins that are in everything these days.
But I don’t know yet how to inspire people without jumping into the hustle of online creation. And that doesn’t resonate with me.
Great read. Two words come to mind: integrity. authenticity, & even they are being thrown around like confetti at an influencers wedding!
Ha! It's such a shame that integrity and authenticity are now click bait in content.
Love this post. I think there is a real movement away from influencer culture. It’s exhausting for the “consumer”, I can’t begin to imagine what it’s like for “creators.”
The real revolution, of course, will never be televised.
I tried the video content for a brief moment and knew almost instantly it is a real thief.
I loved this so much. I have been thinking of this for a long time. And I am someone who promoted the slow living on Instagram. Which I do live by in my own way, but I am in no way able to keep up with those who 'claim' to be fully slow/detached/regulated from the modern fast life. If you have kids - your life is busy - that is just a given! I actually just unfollowed a slow living writer because she was living this life but without children and living in the middle of nowhere and also doesn't work. It was very unlike my life and i don't know why somehow thought my life could be like hers!! ah the internet...
I also did this for a while! Until it crashed me. Being neuro spicy.. that content creation road is a slippery slope especially on platforms like insta. It caused me so much irritability. I had to full stop. Thanks for sharing!
Me too! The pressure to create and share overwhelmed me.
“Your phone, ring light, tripod, following you around all day, while you find the right angle, lighting, and moment to capture. Then you find and take the time to cut, edit, add voice overs, music, captions, the lot. All to present a little cutesy video of you frolicking in the yard with your kids”. This is so grossly inauthentic.
Thank you, Christina!
Any content can get annoying if it's what the internet shows you on your feed all the time. But if sharing pictures of the petunias to free music on youtube is the difference between their family geting to mostly live that life, and mom having to go to work in an office while the kids rot in public schools... I'm all for the petunias. I mean, I'm all for the petunias anyway, because I love flowers, but... I'm also for them in principal in that case.And I'm sure lots of people trying to live that life get demoralized by the rude people who look down on them for it, and think they're all crazy hippies and hillbillies, so I'm guessing it's probably also emotional support for moms trying to give their family a good life while the rest of the world loks down on her because she isn't doing what the city girls do.
Nobody likes or respects the phonies... but personally I'd rather see a million posts about home crafts, organic food or raising chickens, than a million about lip filler, cosmetics, Gucci, and some ridiculously famous woman who sings like she's drunk and ill, and is mainly only famous because she wears so little and has lots of industry advertising. I'd rather watch a man build a log cabin or heard sheep with a dog, or see a woman post her crochet projects, any day.
Can't have it both ways, guys. Either you will have the shallow crowd, or you will have the homesteaders. But whichever you chase off the internet, you will very likely end up with a feed full of the other one, so maybe ask yourself which you'd rather see before sounding the alarm about seeing too much of the other one.