I’m sitting here, trying to catch up on everything, and it dawned on me why Wednesdays (and social media in general) overwhelm me: I have this compulsive urge to literally catch up on everything. Every post, every tweet, every instagram picture, every blog post, every every thing.

Good grief, why???

It’s especially bad on Wednesdays because I’m not online much during my work ‘week’, except maybe a glimpse or two before or after work. So I basically miss 4 days of all of you. That’s a lot to catch up on!

I think it goes back to my beginnings online: first there was a virtual Irish pub that I ‘hung out’ in for a few years, meeting some absolutely wonderful people in the process. Then there was the beloved OB, which was finally shut down by the provider 10 years after it started. On both message boards, it was fairly easy to go to where you left off, catch up and comment, and then join in on the day’s discussions. It seems that has stuck with me, and I scroll back through Twitter, trying to find the last tweet I read, or clicking on each blog I follow and going back to the last one there, too.

Multiply that by 7 platforms I use (I don’t even attempt it with Tumblr), and it’s no wonder that not only am I overwhelmed, but the day is quickly lost to hours online. On one platform I’ve taken to mainly just responding to comments, but I’m pretty much not going to try to scroll through thousands of shares to find the meat of what those I follow have posted about their lives. And that negates the point of being there, because many of them are ONLY on that platform. Yes, it’s FB. Ugh.

It’s not that I think that everyone is breathlessly waiting for me to respond to what they write (or to read what I write), it’s more that I…you know, I honestly don’t know what it is. Maybe I’m a bit OCD when it comes to the internet…?

I need an intervention. 😉

Actually, I just need to remind myself that my attention is not needed on everything I’ve missed, and that’s it’s ok to focus on what I see the day I log on. If I miss something important, someone will tell me, I’m sure, and it’s ok to let the rest go. Fewer platforms would help, too, but there isn’t one platform that everyone loves, so until that happens, multiples must be.

How do you handle your multiple platforms? And which are your favorites? I think that following someone on their most favorite platform and not every one they are on is another way of dealing with the overwhelm, too. Do you do that?

If I follow you on multiple ones, let me know which you prefer, and I’ll drop the rest and see you there. Even if it’s FB. Really. Just for you. 😉

©Pip Miller – June 2015