I went on holiday and didn't document it on social media...

...so I'm documenting it here instead

Hello! Or ‘hola’ as I now say, because I’ve spent the last two weeks here:

Well, not just here, obviously: I didn’t sit at a cafe for two whole weeks, picturesque though it was. But I haven’t been here, on my newsletter, is what I mean — and I haven’t really been on social media all that much either.

I did have vague plans to keep the show on the road while I was gone by posting little video diaries/VLOGs for you, but then I remembered that, a) I hate the sound of my voice/sight of my face and, b) this isn’t the Good Ol’ Days of blogging, when people used to actually care about breaks in content, and I’d spend the run-up to every trip frantically scheduling posts for my blog, otherwise the world would end, as would my career. It’s just not.

And, I mean, thank goodness for that, no? How wonderful to be able to take a break without feeling guilty about letting people down, and worrying that they’ll never forgive me for it! Because, strange and unbelievable though it now sounds, that’s what those ‘good ol’ days’ used to be like. I still remember the time my blog went down for a few days because of a technical problem, and one reader was so angry about it she sent me a furious email telling me how ‘unprofessional’ I was to have left my readers without fresh (free!) content and that she would NEVER FORGIVE ME for it. True story. Unhinged, but true.

But it’s not like that anymore. These days no one really sees my posts, let alone notices if I disappear for a bit, which means I can go on holiday and just enjoy the break, without constantly updating my followers on my every thought and movement.

So that’s what I did.

As well as abandoning my Substack, this was the first holiday I haven’t ruthlessly documented on social media; not because I didn’t want to, but simply because there doesn’t really seem to be much point any more, given the woeful state of the algorithm, and the fact that every time I post something I immediately lose followers. So I did post a few things to my Instagram grid, safe in the knowledge that no one would see them there, but I was largely absent from Stories, where I just seem to annoy people into unfollowing.

Now, if I was a normal person, this is the bit where I’d talk about how refreshing it was to travel somewhere without feeling obliged to document it. I’d talk a lot about how great it was to just be “in the moment”, and how much better I felt for it. I’d probably sound a bit smug and self-righteous as I said this, and I’d almost certainly illustrate my point by telling you about the night we went to the beach to watch the sun go down, and the entire time we were there, there were two girls in front of us taking selfies and photos of each other. The entire time. Almost two solid hours (possibly more, because they were still at it when we left…) of selfies. Nothing else. Those two girls did not experience the beach at sunset, as the photos they were taking were presumably designed to suggest. They did not see the sun go down. All they saw was their own faces in the reverse camera of an iPhone. That’s it.

I’ll be honest: it was hard to watch that kind of behavior and not find it strange, and self-absorbed. It was impossible not to make the observation I’ve made above, about how these women were ‘documenting’ something that didn’t actually happen — or at least, not in the way the photos would suggest. And, in my case, it was equally difficult not to look at them and think, that used to be me once upon a time, and whatever I’m thinking about these two young women, other people must have thought about me.

And I did think those things. I even posted about it on Threads. But I also thought, I get it. I get why they’re doing it. Because I have done it myself¹. And while I don’t miss posing for photos and missing out on ‘real’ life because of it, I’m going to put my hands up here and admit that I do miss the community I used to show those photos to: one which was lively and engaged, and which made me feel a little bit less alone in the world because there was always someone out there — or inside my phone — who would at least appear to be interested in what I was up to.

But now there isn’t: or, if there is, I don’t know about it because I no longer feel like I have a community to share things with. Instagram hides my content from just about everyone. My blog’s comment section is tumbleweed. Substack has never quite clicked for me, and Threads is basically just a bunch of airplane seat stories, interspersed with Americans and Europeans being perpetually surprised to find that they’re not exactly the same as each other in every possible respect.

I really miss the community that used to exist on social media and blogs. I miss having a reason to document my outfits, and my holidays, and that really great cocktail I had one night; because, sure, I can still take the photos of those things for myself, but the fact is I don’t want to. Or, I mean, I do, but I also want to share them with someone. Because it turns out I’m just not capable of experiencing something and not wanting to tell someone about it. This is possibly a Writer Thing, but the fact is, I don’t document my life because I feel obliged to: I do it because I want to — and I always have, ever since I was a ten year old girl scribbling in her diary, and feeling like she hadn’t fully experienced something until she’d written it down.

I still feel like that, but these days it’s not enough for me to just write something down in a diary, or take a photo no one will ever see. I’ve been writing/creating for an audience for almost two decades now, and suddenly not having one (Or not an engaged one, at least…) is a weird kind of adjustment, and one that I can’t quite get used to. So I don’t want to be the two girls on the beach, but I do want to show someone my photo of the beach, and the sunset, and then maybe tell them about this one woman we’d see at the pool every day who’d just get up and wander off to the bar, leaving her two-year-old alone in the water. And while I don’t want people to send me angry emails when I don’t supply them with these random updates, looking back on it now, I can’t help but think, well, at least someone cared. You know?

Anyway, here is the beach at sunset:

My photo of the beach

Here’s a cute pink house I had to lurk in front of for ages so I could get this photo that I ended up not posting anyway because no one would see it on Instagram:

Here’s me and Max, who is somehow almost as tall as me now, HOW?

Here’s a glass of wine in front of a view I wish I was looking out at now, instead of my rainy suburban street:

And here are our suitcases, in the process of being unpacked and then re-packed for our annual trip to Kent next week:

Until next week, folks…

1. I can’t publish this without adding that I have never taken photos of myself for TWO WHOLE HOURS. Even at my worst, I wasn’t quite THAT bad. But still.