Why My Social Media Queue Sits Empty

Buffer keeps sending me emails telling me my social media queues are empty. It’s usually a nice reminder when you’re a solopreneur and the social media scheduler you pay to use reminds you that you’re behind in your self-promotion. But not this morning. Not today. Not on July 1.  Today it was just another reminder that in exactly one month I will no longer be living in the apartment I have spent the last twenty-two years of my life.

Just writing the words fills me with anxiety.

It reminds me of all the stuff that needs to be done. The search for a new home. The packing. The decisions I need to make about what needs to get tossed and what needs to stay. As I like to say, I am Marie Kondoing my life. But in the process of asking the question of whether something brings me joy anymore or whether I should list it for sale on AptDeco, I find myself often getting caught up in the memories of when it did bring me joy and then falling deep into reflection on where my life has been and where it’s going next.

For me this is not just an apartment I am leaving. It is the home I made it. I learned how to do that from my mother who even when we lived in a tiny apartment in Glen Oaks Village made it a home, a safe respite from the harshness of the outside world.

So this has me thinking of the people that I have invited into my home over the years, people that have been in my life and many, for whatever reason no longer play such a big role. The Christmases and the Thanksgivings I hosted. The parties. Kisses shared. Breakups endured. Tears shed. Jobs lost. Jobs won. The eerie quietness after 9/11 when no aircraft was allowed near the city and how safe I felt inside these walls. The pages upon pages I have written in this very chair, my feet stretched out, my laptop perched on my legs.  I find myself remembering the laughter and the tears and sometimes rewriting scenes and chapters and wondering how differently things might have been if only.

It turns out moving is just one part of the stress. Yes it will be hard to leave this space in July, one of my favorite months here, when the days are the longest, the sun the brightest in my living room and the sunsets I can see from my window the prettiest.

But the bigger source of my stress is the realization of how much time has passed and how fast it has gone and with that decisions and choices on how I want things to look moving forward.

So my social media queue is incidental right now. I have no time to think out what and where I want to share content and to keep the momentum of my brand going. I’ll figure that out in August when I’m hanging pictures and trying to make my furniture fit in a smaller space. You see I am one of those New Yorkers who had a great space at a great under the market price for a long time, renting from an owner who has now sold the apartment to someone who wants to live in it. Now I have to deal in the reality of just how pricey this town can be.

So when people I have not seen ask me how my summer is going I tell them my summer is about moving, about ending one chapter and beginning one that I have yet to figure out the first line for. And as for my social media …. it will be sporadic, like my blogs, and Buffer will just have to take my money and deal with it until there is time to wrap my head around that part of my life again.

But not now. Not today.