My family needs help with our finances.

I write this not because I want your pity – God provides. He has in the past and he will again.

I say this to explain a couple of my actions recently.

Two weeks ago I joined TikTok to try to drum up some sales for my books and bring us in a little income. I did it despite having huge misgivings about the platform. HUGE MISGIVINGS.

I have made very little money from my books and that’s okay. I’ve had a lot of fun writing them and meeting other writers or connecting with my readers.

Still, if there was a chance I could bring in some sales, I needed to try.

So I started making videos for TikTok and Instagram and posts for Facebook.

Then, I became overwhelmed and, quite frankly, pretty disgusted with the insane amount of attention grabbing on social media. Yes, I realize I was starting to do the same to earn some money.

I share about my life on social media and on my blog. I like to connect with others and I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. I am not remotely interested in fame or being popular.

I am interested in making connections, having fun, and maybe bringing in a little income.

What I have seen on social media, though, has turned my stomach to the point I’m ready to walk away from the majority of it and go back to merely sharing my books on here, advertising by word of mouth and sharing for free where I can.

I have seen a woman crying in front of a camera when she sent her children to school and all I wanted to know was when did she set the camera up? Was it before she started crying or after or did she cry for the camera. I mean it seemed like a very realistic interaction with her husband but if she was so worried about her children going to their first day of school then at what point did she pause her worry in the moment to make sure the camera was set up correctly?

The worse example of this was the one of a woman climbing into her truck and sitting there crying with a box next to her. The box was her husband’s urn, the caption said. She’d just collected his ashes from the funeral home, she said. She and her children would have to live without him.

Yet, she’d had the forethought, before she went to get his ashes, to set her camera up on a tripod or something similar and record herself crying.

I’ve lost three aunts in the last five years. The last thing on my mind while I grieved them was that I should set up a camera to record myself crying.

I understand that it is good to connect with others going through something similar to us and one way to do this is through social media but when in the world did social media become our therapist and God?

Why in the world would people turn to their camera instead of praying to God? Why do we document every single second of our life? Nothing is sacred anymore. Nothing. Not even the death of a husband or the loss of a baby or the breakup of a marriage. People document all of it before they even process it.

There is a popular Christian speaker/author who documents her life tragedies in a new book every time one occurs. Sometimes I wonder if she creates drama simply so she can write about it and speak about it and make more money. The dust hasn’t even settled on one tragedy or crisis when she is writing about it and sending it to the publishers and then making Bible studies and speaking engagements around the book.

Her husband cheated on her, she wrote all about it and dragged him to counseling and they wrote all about it and held a renewal of vowels ceremony and she wrote a book. Then she developed breast cancer and wrote another book. Then she and her husband split – another book. This was all in about the span of four or five years. I don’t see how she ever had time to process any of what was happening to her. Some might say she was processing it through writing. I have processed some very serious situations in my life through writing but I have not shared all of what I have written. A lot of that is between me and God, not me, God and the rest of the world.

The term is narcissim, I think.

The desire to share your entire life with the world and then to watch the lives of others from your phone or computer without actually interacting with people.

There was a young woman on TikTok live that I saw last week that broke my heart. She might have been 15 and she was simply sitting in front of the camera with a red curtain behind her, wearing dark eyeliner and make up and a dress too old for her, her knees hugged to her chest while watching TV. She wasn’t doing anything other than watching TV while other people watched her and then once in a while she’d say, “Thanks for the rose.” I don’t know what a rose is on TikTok but I’m guessing some sort of payment? I have no idea but how sad is it that people were paying to watch a teenager sit and watch TV?

We live in a sick world and I don’t want to be part of it. I’ll continue to promote my books here and there, even on social media, but I just can’t put my entire life out there for everyone to see. It’s none of their business. Recording or documenting every second of my life just isn’t something that interests me in the least.

It makes me anxious trying to even keep up with videos to help get attention to my books. I can’t imagine the level of internal anxiety in those who record their whole lives for the world to see.