At the start of Lockdown 1.0, I watched as other businesses issued declarations like “in light of the global pandemic Georges Tea Rooms won’t be taking orders…”, and; “in order to keep the public safe we will not be supplying cupcakes at this time”.
The decision will not have come lightly, of course not. This is what people do for a living. Some of the effects of this stuff *gestures at world affairs… fell upon trades and industries that didn’t touch my world. At times we are thrust into the full stream of events and must try to balance, other times we get to choose how deeply we engage.
Sometimes we have to not care too much.
Social media connects us too quickly, and sometimes inappropriately. Late the other doomscroll I was warned about a tragedy in the USA. I’m an over-thinker by habit, and an over-feeler by flaw. I felt terrible for all those people suffering so far away.
As I shut the machine it felt strange that just a few years ago such a thing probably wouldn’t even make it on to the next day’s news here in rural Devon, UK. I would not have even heard about it, unless someone I knew had the dreadful misfortune of being involved.
I cried because the news was just so damned awful. Luckily, and I imagine this could be said of most people, we did not know any of the poor souls caught up in the event.
We get to share the triumphs as well as the tragedy, in real time.
So it’s with this (*gestures at everything) in mind that I won’t be doing social media for a wee while. I need to keep enough of me in-tact to be useful and whole.
Speaking of usefulness, I’ve been in training for an HGV licence so I can get out there and drive aid missions ASAP. I’ve just passed the computer based theory tests, soon the practical training begins.
Wish me luck!
And I wish you luck, too. It’s a tough old world out there. And times like these (*gestures again at ALL THE THINGS) remind me how you, our customer, have carried us through. Every. Single. Storm.
It would be no less of a feat during this moment right now had this not been preceded by all the recent events that came before it, Covid, Brexit and now a cost of living crisis. For many people right now things have not moved on a single inch. Maybe a loss or a grievance, maybe a material deficit from where things were just a few years ago.
Our plans have been changed
Our own plans have changed, actually they changed around us and we have had to accept them. We are not in a place to attract investment and as such almost certainly will never be major players in UK online retail. We are also a smaller team again – Just Shannon and I.
And so there will be no grand announcement “in the light of a global effort to corrupt the Dartmoor Sheepskins timeline, we have regrettably been forced to quit Twitter and Facebook.
There will be even fewer declarations of certainty – who knows, maybe we’ll be back in a couple of weeks? Maybe we will leave our social accounts to languish in obscurity for evermore?
You’ll always find Shannon and I here on Dartmoor Sheepskins though, and we look forward to meeting you in real life as well. With any luck the topic of conversation will be how well everyone is doing, and isn’t it nice that the men have stopped doing the war?
I’ll miss your posts on Twitter. You often shared some thought-provoking and interesting content. I understand your reasons for quitterizing it: I banned myself from reading the Daily Mail comments section and from clicking on trends on Twitter to find out who is in trouble for saying the wrong thing (which, let’s face it, is what the trends are almost always filled with). Good luck with the sheepskins and with the HGV licence.
Thank you Andrew, yes, you’ve hit the nail on the head! I think there’s something attractive about feeling in touch and informed… but an awful lot of it seems to be an argument… and I’m giving it a rest for a while. Never know, I may return… Until then, may I wish you the very best 🙂