Social Experiment

I’m sure by now you might be wondering what happened. Why no new posts? Where did I disappear to?

Although it was longer than I had anticipated, the absence was completely intentional; a little experiment involving social media and my mental well being.

Let me take a minute to explain. It was late 2017, early 2018 when I began noticing a certain amount of stress associated with my fishing life. A stress that was not previously present, and one that was increasing with time.

At first I couldn’t figure it out. Fishing had always being not just enjoyable, but relaxing and stress free. As a matter of fact, fishing did for me what it does for most, it alleviated the stress of daily life. Fishing provided an escape that ended in mental clarity. At least it did anyway.

When the stress of fishing began building to the point that I was spending less time on the water, I knew something had to be done. What that something was I did not know.
It was shortly after that, I realized that it wasn’t the actual act of fishing that had been stressing me out, but instead it was what much of fishing had become in the wake of modern technology, more specifically social media, and the negativity that hangs over fishing because of it.

I don’t need to go into detail about this as I’m sure we’ve all, at some point, come across said negativity. The pictures, the comments, whatever it may be, we’ve all seen it. For the most part I used to just carry on, ignoring the bad and pushing through to the good, because I do believe there is more good than bad. At some point however, it was too much to push through. It followed me to the water and changed how I viewed the fishing world.

In knowing that, I decided to try something. I gave up social media. Now did I have to stop writing this blog? No, but I did feel the need to stay away for a while, the reason I can’t quite say. And guess what? It worked. It took longer than expected, but it worked. For the last few months I’ve got back to enjoying what I do.

Both my fishing and my blogging friends, along with many readers were adamant that this blog would not survive without the help of social media. ‘It’s just the way things work’ they said, and convinced me to keep just one outlet (you can follow me on Twitter @onemanobsessed), but for the most part I am going to rely on my readers to follow along and help spread the word. Maybe they’re right, maybe this blog does need social media to succeed. I hope they are wrong. If social media is what it needs, then it is most likely doomed.