LOGGING OFF VS LOGGING OUT

It's no secret that I am all aboard the train of having time away from social media, ironically that now it's a large part of my job, I'm more aware than ever on how it can affect day to day life and just how incredibly important it is to differentiate between work and home. Which when your job can be accessed through your mobile, it means putting down the phone and closing down the apps for a while. Iphones now have the delightful feature so we can see just how much time we're using, or wasting depending how you want to look at it, and in what places. Obviously for me Instagram was the biggest culprit when I first started reading into the numbers last year and it's easy to see why, with a simple click of the little icon you can get lost in a world of metro tiles and idealistic quotes, it's very easy to see the highlights of everyone else's lives and compare it to the reality of your own.


A year ago not posting a photo for five days across social media would have been unheard of for me, I quite frankly would of freaked out at the idea of not having something scheduled and dancing around like a bit of a twit trying to figure something to get online before the 'prime interaction times' were over. Laughable to me now but something I truly struggled with last year, pressure. Being online is evidently important when my whole career is based on the internet, but having a presence across social media shouldn't come with the notion that you have to be constantly active. I put myself in my own shoes as a reader of blogs, a follower on Instagram etc, when the accounts I love don't post or pop up for a few days, am I switching off from them and moving on? Absolutely not, so why on earth was I worried about that happening to me, sure there's a chance someone might think you've disappeared off into Narnia but there's also an equally high chance that posting four times a day is going to get on someones nerves and they'll find that unfollow button just as fast. You can't make people interested and whether you show up every hour, day or week, people will decide themselves if they want to stick around.

Logging out is important, not just for peace of mind and mental health but for any creative getting time away from your job allows you to refocus and regroup. Not many singers have a recording studio in their bedroom, or a microphone in their back pocket, artists don't walk around with a paintbrush behind their ear or an easel in the back of their car - it's harder when you're in the digital industry to lose balance and let home life become engulfed by work life. But I'm certainly not letting the social media tsunami hit my shores again, don't get me wrong I am no preacher, there are plenty of days when I've scrolled past the same photos enough times to memorise the captions, which we know thanks to algorithms is an absolute miracle to see anything more than once.

 I've most definitely learnt the difference between logging off now and logging out, just because I decide to delete an app for a weekend doesn't mean I'm abandoning my job, I'm shutting up shop and never posting again, quite the opposite. I'm remembering that whilst I am the face behind Babies and Beauty, I'm also the face my boys need to see in the morning that isn't partially hidden behind a phone or laptop. I'm the one who needs to be reading a bedtime story completely tangled in the sheets next to my five year old, noticing he has far too much play dough under his finger nails rather than being the excuse of 'can you do it, I have to finish this'. Logging out is my way of using my clocking out card at the end of my shift, hitting the shut down button or hanging my uniform up after a long day and now that I've truly discovered the importance, I'll be relishing every moment.