The Feedback Frenzy

I would be too embarrassed to tell you how much outside feedback I sought out today.

Help on why my throat felt weird after having soy latte, what other people's tips are on moving in with a significant other, what the general Internet thinks about certain diets, etc.

These things may not seem that bad. They might even seem helpful.

But then I realized something. A lot of my expectations of how I might be, can be, should be, stem from what other people say.

Things I didn't even think were an issue before,

suddenly become an issue when someone online says it is.

Like random body parts that should look different, 

ways I should be spending my time, 

how I should act and think as a female.

They are things I don't even realize are settling in, calling me out in the back of my mind.

Like I need constant reassurance from the expansive variety of voices on the Internet and in my daily life.

Web MD thinks I'm dying. Some random forum thinks I should be married before moving in with my boyfriend. Magazines point out "must-haves" for each season. Even people in my life, real people who aren't just behind the computer screen, have some kind of input on what I should be like. 

And honestly? I'm a little sick of it. 

It's hard to block out all that noise when we are so, so inundated with it. It's hard to know what's floating around in my mind as an actual thought, or as someone else's judgment. And so often, I deeply crave a disconnect. A complete shutting off of it all. A chance to reset and recharge.

I wonder what I would be like without the input from TV shows, websites, blogs, and generally every other medium out there.

I wonder if I would be happier or less worried.

Unfortunately, I think I would be.

Even more unfortunately, I don't know how possible it is to achieve that kind of feedback purge in our society. 

It's convenient and fun to have so much information at our fingertips.

But I think it's also suffocation.

I'd like to ponder something without Google butting in or Pinterest answering my question.

Just once.

But that's up to me. And honestly, "Internet research" is one of my great loves.

And my undoing.

This post doesn't come with some pearl of wisdom on how to balance the two.

Mostly it's a rant.

But hopefully it's one we can all relate to.

Because the ultimate question, the one I have to ask myself time and time again, every single day, is not "How do we avoid all this input, feedback and information?"

I can't ask that question, because I think it's basically unavoidable.

The real question, then, 

is what will become of us because of it?