private life Archives - Just to Claireify

I Left Instagram–Here’s Why

January 27, 2025 by Claire Leave a Comment

Please excuse the lack of post last Monday–norovirus was wrapping up its stay at our house and my head was in a thousand different places!

I’ve been thinking about this—and other offline-ing life changes—for a while. Finally pulled the trigger this week! So if you’re looking for @justtoclaireifyblog and wondering if I blocked you for some reason… nope! I just don’t exist on the ‘gram anymore.

I’ve written a lot about my tenuous relationship with social media on the blog before (see my social media and privacy tags for my musings through the years). At times, I’ve felt like there’s something wrong with me because I feel like I just can’t handle social media sometimes. Instagram is impactful in particular—although Facebook and Reddit aren’t blameless either.… Read More »

What’s On My Mind: What Should I Write About?

March 8, 2024 by Claire Leave a Comment

One of my blogger friends used to have a post series called “What’s On My Mind” that I loved. Sometimes you just want to hear somebody’s unfiltered, unedited, not-SEO-optimized thoughts about something.

So, I’m using the idea here. Sometimes I want to chat about a specific topic, and that chat is too long to put in a 2-3 sentence snippet in my Life Lately posts. Today’s topic is blogging as a parent–or more accurately, blogging as a parent when you don’t want to write about your kids.… Read More »

Simplifying My Online Presence: Update Part 1

May 14, 2018 by Claire Leave a Comment

It’s been a little while since I wrote about simplifying my online presence for the first time and since I reflected on what Facebook “friends” are and why we have so many. (Also, I just noticed that Disqus has eaten all of the comments on that second post–what a shame! People had some great points to make about the pros and cons of Facebook. I promise I didn’t delete all of your lovely comments <3)

Since then I’ve accomplished a few more things on my digital minimizing to-do list, including a big one this weekend.… Read More »

Thoughts on Facebook Friends

April 11, 2018 by Claire Leave a Comment

A couple of months ago I started minimizing my online life. I decided about a month later to continue sharing personal posts on this blog. However, I do try to keep my family and friends’ identities protected and I haven’t stopped scaling back on social media, particularly Facebook.

Besides deleting my YouTube, Google+, and two Twitter accounts, I mentioned that I have unfriended more than five hundred people on Facebook over the past few years. Now almost six hundred, in fact. I wasn’t a popularity queen in high school or college either. When I look back at some the names of people I’ve deleted in my Facebook data, I don’t even know who they are.… Read More »