Mindy Carlson

A new term has entered my vocabulary. I wanted to share it with you because it opened my eyes to a compulsive behavior that was sucking my life away.

Doomscrolling.

Have you ever caught yourself mindlessly flipping through Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or any of these social media sharing apps that populate our phones? Then you might have been doomscrolling.

I do it when I am desperately searching for a precious morsel of news that will lift my mood. I am looking for a reminder that the world is truly a good place where people love and care for each other instead of the Hellscape we currently find ourselves in.

Birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, virus mitigation, family news, school achievements, sports victories – I look for anything that will give me a hint of an endorphin boost.

But it doesn’t make me feel better for long.

You know what has started making these long COVID days better? Reading. Writing. Morning walks. Talking to friends. Sending letters. Those are the activities that are warming my heart.

When I’m scrolling, I’m insulated from having to feel anything too deeply. My joy, sadness, anger are all superficial. And it makes me lonely and disconnected. Ironic isn’t it. Social media was supposed to connect us. It does as far as the sharing of ideas and philosophical thought, but it doesn’t allow us to share us – who we really are.

This is why I’m thankful that I started writing. It was last year at this very time that I sat and seriously started working on a book. And it is now, at this very moment, that I am working on my second book while shopping my first book to agents. It’s a hard road and it would be easy to hide myself away from the incredibly emotional journey that becoming a published author has turned into by scrolling through Twitter or Facebook.

I hope you find your thing that gets you back into the world. I hope to see you on the other side of COVID.