Planting Vs Weeding

“I like gardening — it’s a place where I find myself when I need to lose myself.”  - Alice Sebold

I didn’t have a lot of experience gardening or farming until recently. Now, I can’t get enough of having my hands in the dirt bent over rows of vegetables with the sun on my back.

And I’m learning a ton! Farming  - for a living  -  is an incredibly hard pursuit. Organic farming, like the one owned by my friend, is even harder. You don’t spray pesticides and call it a day. Planting is hard work. But the real work is weeding. Weeds are a daily chore. They are always creeping up, threatening the life of the crop that they surround. Strong plants can not survive if they are surrounded by weeds. It’s not possible. Good soil is at a premium and the weeds suck the nutrients for themselves. In doing so, they damage the surrounding vegetables, fruits and flowers in the process.

The other day I realized that how a farmer or gardener approaches weeding is very much how I currently feel about social media and how I use technology to connect with friends.

I’m really good at cultivating friendships. I go to events and add people I meet on various platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram). I email people and have other mediums (like this newsletter) to keep in touch. However, I’m not always great at weeding people out who are overshadowing the relationships that matter in my life. There are people sucking up my time and energy when I could be spending on it the people who really matter to me. On the relationships I’ve already cultivated.

Who are the weeds? You know the kind of people I mean. Friends we keep but don’t really feel that same connection anymore, chronic over-sharers on social media, people who are in front of our face but not the faces we really want to see.

But they’re everywhere, sucking up the nutrients. My goodness I thought, I’ve been planting the seeds of good relationships but not weeding out the bad. No wonder I’m exhausted all the time.

What is there to do? If I think friendships are like plants, then I needed to read about effective weed control methods and apply them to my situation.

• Mulch, mulch, mulch - Cultivate the good, ignore the bad. I don’t have to confront the people I want less in my life, I just have to focus on the ones I want more. I recently have made an effort to schedule IRL time with people I want to see and phone calls with friends in other cities. Because of this I feel more fulfilled and happier than I have in weeks — and that is in large part thanks to Thea, Deana, Clint, Erica, Jessica, Rich, Heather, Lane, Jonathan, Lauren, Ruthie, Erik and Aubrey.
• Be vigilant  - It’s easiest to stop a weed when it’s small. It’s not easy to be intentional about who I spend time with but if I don’t pay attention, the weeds will take over!
• *Lob off their heads * -  Unfollowing on social media is HARD. But it must be done. I have gone through and cut 500 people from my Twitter feed and 100 from Facebook. I can and will do more, but since it takes time it’s going to have to happen in phases. It’s no offense, but I need less noise.
• Pull when wet, hoe when dry  -  I just really liked this one! But seriously, there are variables to consider. Not all weeding is the same so not all social media is the same. I want LinkedIn to be a catch-all for everyone I meet. Fine. I’m not weeding there. I want Instagram to stay small — only what is visually appealing to me. I want Twitter to be good information, and Facebook to be the people I want to see. Every channel is different. There is no one size fits all.

Most of all, it takes constant tender care. Weeding sucks. It’s much better to plant and harvest. However you can’t have one without the others. I have learned that I have to carve out time for the weeding or else the plants won’t grow.