Self-Ease
It’s been a week since the project ended, and I wanted to make this follow-up post to tell a little of what the project was and why I did it, I guess.  It started out as me just trying to understand sharing and social media better.  I’ve never been one to share a lot about my life, and feelings, and stuff, and I thought it was interesting and kind of weird that people shared so much seemingly trivial stuff online.  But with the scale of the project (a selfie/post every 30 minutes for 30 days) it also became about privacy, and oversharing.  Most people use social media to share a very curated view of their lives, to control how other people see it.  With this project I tried not to do that, and just show as honestly as possible everything that was happening whenever my timer went off.  I feel like it’s interesting, and somewhat hypocritical that people will accept and like someone, or hire them, etc. only as long as they don’t have to actually know what that person does with their life.  This was especially relevant to me because I’m gay in a Mormon family and community.  I had several conversations that basically came down to people telling me not to do the project because people were only okay with my sexuality, and lifestyle as long as they didn’t have to really know about it.  Growing up in that community, and being part of the Mormon church for so long hearing that who I was was wrong made hiding anything about myself my default instinct.  This project was a way for me to reject that upbringing and show everything I do to anyone who cares to look because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, or me anymore.  So, instead of presenting the view of my life that people wanted to see to try and fit with society and the community I grew up in and am connected to through social media, I tried to just show my life for exactly what it was, and let people choose to accept it, or not.
