The first one…
Hey,
Welcome to the first post of the blog and welcome to the website.
It’s been a long time coming and it’s taken a lot longer to build than I was anticipating but it’s finally ready to go out into the world wide web! (Whenever I say the words “world wide web” I must do it in Uncle Bryn’s voice from Gavin and Stacey. Anyone else do that?)
The website is “good enough” at the moment, a phrase I’m learning a lot on from my counselling course. There are a few more client stories I want to share plus a few more things to build but for now, it is “good enough”
I have been umming and ahhing for a little while now about building a website. Since I began coaching 5 years ago, a lot of my advertising has been through the social media sites (mostly Instagram and Facebook, I dabbled a little bit in TikTok) but those sites five years ago were very different to what they are today in 2025. In fact, I’m not even sure we can call it social media anymore, can we? What’s social about it?
I’ve been long asking the question to myself “Is social media healthy?” and I think I’m finding myself landing increasingly more in the camp that it probably isn’t.
It’s scary to see how long some people spend on social media and how, for many people, their day starts and ends with a scroll on **insert social media site here**
I think it probably is affecting people’s health in a lot more ways than we realise and not just from a physical point of view but mentally, emotionally and socially. For something that is supposed to be about connection, I’m not sure we have ever been more disconnected as a society?
And as someone whose job is predominantly built around improving people’s health, I felt a bit of a fraud.
Now, I’m not naïve enough to completely remove social media from the business but I will be using it very differently. For a start, I don’t have the apps on my phone anymore and I only go on them on my laptop. When I do go on, it’s very intentional. (It’s amazing how much calmer my mind is without doom-scrolling)
From a business point of view, I was finding I was spending increasingly more time on creating content in the hope of getting my message out there but for less and less return.
It genuinely got to one point where, for about 6 months, I was spending more time creating content than I was working with clients.
Social media has become so fast paced now that, for somebody like me who is a one-man band, it’s almost impossible to keep up with the demands of it. Long gone are the days of a few posts a week being the norm.
We live in a world governed by instant gratification and it’s no different on social media. If you are putting out a piece of content, the general rule of thumb is you must grab someone’s attention within 2-3 seconds or they have scrolled onto the next thing.
As a result, I was making content that I didn’t particularly believe in but would hopefully give me the best chance of people seeing it. And that didn’t really sit well with me.
Everyone talks about the “algorithm” but I’m not sure anyone really knows what that means. One thing is for sure, the big social media sites want to keep you scrolling for as long as possible and to do that, they are prepared to show you whatever they need to. And that’s a very scary prospect.
I’m not sure where social media, in general, will end up. Don’t get me wrong, there are good things it has to offer but I’m not really liking where it is right now so it feels right for me to take a step back from it.
You’ll still hear from me on there but it will be less frequent and it will probably be a post telling you to come and read my latest blog- ha!
I hope you’ve enjoyed the first blog post. I haven’t committed to how often I’ll write but I’m thinking once a week will be a good start.
Please look around the website and let me know your thoughts. It’s not the finished article just yet but it is good enough…