Hello everyone! Today, I thought I’d continue sharing how I’m bringing the concept of “slow living” into my life. This time, I’m focusing on it my digital life!

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I previously shared a general post on how I’m bringing slow living into my life. The concept revolves around simplifying your life in an effort to increase peace and enjoyment. I had pretty much started doing this naturally, as I think a lot of people did, when the pandemic first started last year. I found that I really enjoyed what I was doing and then tried looking up online if other people were experiencing the same thing. Turns out they were!

I’ve found a ton of resources on Pinterest and YouTube when I search “slow living” or “hygge” so if you want to learn more, those are great search terms to use. But also please read that post I linked above haha! Anyway, as I continued to incorportate more slow living ideas into my physical space, I realized that I needed a digital make over too.

Oh! If you’re new here (newer than May 2020) you might be wondering, what’s BirthMay? Well, every year I blog every day in May because it is my birth month. I just figured it was something fun to do, and it has proven to be really enjoyable for me. This will be the fifth BirthMay on my blog! No matter how many BirthMays you’ve been through with me, thank you for being here this BirthMay and thank you for your support!

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Introducing Slow Living to my Digital Life – Content I Create

Like many people, I live a large portion of my life online. Maybe even more than most considering I run this blog that’s centered on my life! I’ve also been a huge social media user throughout my twenties, and while I do love social media, I just found that I couldn’t keep up with the “expectations” of it over the years.

About two years ago I really scaled back what I shared. Previously I did try to share my blog posts on Pinterest, I shared so many photos of products I used on Instagram, I shared my thoughts on Twitter. Oh, and there was a lot of graduate school content to share too! But then I became much more private and only shared the “highlights” of my life such as travel photos or other cool stuff I was doing. I didn’t share much of my home life. So when we started quarantining at home, there was suddenly nothing to share! It didn’t feel right to share old travel photos even though I had plenty from my trip to Mexico that I’d taken right before the pandemic changed our lives and I wasn’t going anywhere to take more photos.

That’s not to say I didn’t try to make content for Instagram, which I’ll focus on for this post. I did! I would take photos when out on walks in different locations to make it look like I was exploring cool outdoor spaces still, which I was but it was still just the same space over and over again. I shared garden photos, photos of my puppy niece. And then I lost interest.

As of right now, I haven’t posted on Instagram since December. I’m still on Instagram a lot, seeing other people’s posts and stories. What I’ve tried to do is to unfollow accounts that I didn’t need anymore, like brands I don’t really shop from anymore and such. I also went through and removed the spam accounts that were following me. On one hand, I’d love to make my account private so only people who actively seek me out can see my content. But I also don’t want to limit it because I don’t know what kind of content I want to share going forward either! I’m still figuring it out.

Introducing Slow Living to my Digital Life – Content I Consume

As I slowed down my life, I noticed that the content I was consuming didn’t always reflect the energy I wanted to bring into my life. As I mentioned, I unfollowed brands I no longer shopped regularly. For example, when I started my blog I thought I would be more beauty focused, so I was following make up brands and influencers. I finally unfollowed them as they were cluttering up my feed. I also unfollowed clothing brands, and influencers who seemed to be constantly shopping.

One of the platforms that I spend a majority of my time on is YouTube. I was following close to 200 channels as recently as this week. I found myself watching content simply because it came up in my subscriptions tab and trying to keep up with it but I really didn’t enjoy the content as much anymore. For example, I was following about five or more channels solely based on bullet journal content, but I am pretty set in my own bullet journaling ways already. I loved the channels when I started my bujo because it was nice to get ideas but I found I didn’t need them anymore. While I also enjoyed the calming and creative space of the videos, I realized I needed to “declutter” them from my subscription feed. I also unfollowed accounts that were inactive for awhile, channels of influencers who constantly post hauls or constantly redecorate, and high drama creators.

I found that I was using a very Marie Kondo method when it came to unsubscribing from channels. For example, I found myself fondly recollecting the content I did enjoy from those creators once upon a time and thanking them for the entertainment. Then I looked through their recent content, just to double check if I had watched anything from them recently. Most of the time, I hadn’t watched a video from them in months, sometimes even in the past year. So I quietly unsubscribed.

I am now following 115 channels, many of which I still pick and chose from in my feed. But I’m glad that I have a less busy feed and I look forward to unfollowing more as time goes on. I’ve also done this with the podcasts I follow, more Instagram accounts, and plan to continue with my Twitter feed.

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So that’s a quick snapshot of how I’ve been decluttering my online spaces! I still have a long way to go, but I think this is a great start.

Thanks for reading!

Pamela

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