STRUGGLING WITH SOCIAL MEDIA? YEAH, ME TOO…

Hej, Messmate!

I know, I’ve said it a million times, but I really lost interest in social media when Elon turned twitter into his personal ego site. I’ve tried to get back to it, tried to think of ways to get into that space that made socials my happy place back in the day, but nothing has worked. 

My game plan for August was quite simply to make a kottam strategy and stick with it. So far, I’ve spent three weeks doing sod all, but this morning, I had a penny-drop moment. It was inspired by something that came up in a chat with our Sea Witch, Marie, and something Michelle Obama said at the DNC last night.

I’m still mulling the key take-away over in my head, but it’s related to how hard it is to function, to get on with things, when you take hope and joy out of the equation. And how we sometimes hang on to a plan, or keep doing things in a certain way, because that’s the way it was supposed to be. Or because we’ve put so much effort into it that setting it aside to start something new feels like a failure. 

Marie and I were talking about pen names, and how sometimes we channel a certain energy, or state of mind, into a particular pen name. In Sir Bear’s case, we are working on romance/erotica as Leto Armitage and on sci-fi/fantasy as Leto’s twin brother, Liam. This also feeds into his social media presence in the way Leto’s posts are more playful and all over the place, while Liam’s are based on the nerdier stuff like dice, games, and miniatures.

The smart part about this is that you can let your “themed” accounts stick on topics that are relevant to that pen name. It works really well as long as you have the energy to keep churning out new posts on a regular basis. Something I’ve not been able to do since I fell out of love with socials a year ago.

I have made failing, or doing shit badly, on purpose a way of life. It’s a super successful coaching strategy that has helped loads of people get over their limiting beliefs and start jumping off their dang cliffs. You’d think that would make it easy enough for me to get out of my own way and brave that social media cliff, right? I wish.

I’m a chaos pet at heart, but I crave order to function. I need plans and schedules, and they have to be made in a way that stimulates my creative chaos brain. Our social media game was based on such a plan. I wrote the strategy and kept doing all the right things until I ran out of social oxygen. 

The plan was there. It was good. It was simple to follow. But I could not bring myself to keep doing it. There were so many days when I wanted to post something, but ended up not doing it. Because it wasn’t according to plan. Because it felt silly to post [whatever] after x days or weeks of no posts. Because it didn’t fit the theme.

It was all nonsense, of course. I knew it was, but I still couldn’t get off that dang cliff. Which brings me back to this morning’s penny-dropping moment. The original social strategy is still good, so we’re not throwing it away. But for now, I’m going to ignore all the rules and plans and embrace the chaos.

See, that’s the whole point of cliff jumping. You throw yourself off that scary peak, land somewhere new, and see what happens. If you like it, you keep exploring this new world until you find yourself on another cliff. If you hate it, you can either climb back up again, or you set out exploring the new world until you find something you do like. Either way, you’ve pushed your limits and learned something new.

And with that, my friend, I’m going to tie my shoelaces and jump. Let the chaos commence! 

Puss & Kram,

//Linnea 🖤

Linnea Lucifer is the Captain of the imaginary, yet very real, pirate ship Resilience and her merry crew of indie authors and omnivorous readers. But that is not all – amateur liar, weaver of stories, peddler of merch, lifelong spoonie, ancient dragon lady and Maddox Rhinehart’s irreverent pet are a few more words often used to describe the bearer of many names.

The Captain was named after a delicate little flower that grows in mossy, Swedish pine forests, and a certain fiery fallen angel. She spends most of her days daydreaming and writing fantasy, smut and painfully crappy poems. A diva of delight, she takes great pleasure in everything that tickles the senses and adds a sprinkle of magic and spice to our world.

Linnea writes fantasy rooted in Norse mythology and Scandinavian folklore under the pen name Saga Linnea Söderberg. She also writes Sweet’n’Spicy Spoonie romance together with Leto Armitage under their joint pen name Linn Rhinehart.