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Join James Petrossi in 'Leave the Feed: 30 Days of Disconnect' as he interviews creators and mental health advocates about their journeys, the digital quagmire, and tips to create a healthier relationship with social media.
[00:00:00]
James Petrossi: Hello and welcome to Leave the Feed 30 Days of Disconnect. Today is day 24, winding down, talking about shared moments with Emilia Igartua, Emilia welcome to the show. So excited to have you with us today.
Emilia: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here and to be able to talk about this very, very important topic. I feel.
James Petrossi: Let's start with your story. Let's talk about your journey in travel, hospitality, the arts. How did all of this unfold and where has this path taken you?
Emilia: I'm a huge multi-passionate person, so I have done a lot of very different things throughout my life, but one very big constant has always been art and travel. My, my family is very, has always been very artsy. I mean, not my mom, but [00:01:00] my dad. He's an artist. He's always been a photographer.
He used to build this incredible floats for the carnival that we have here in Mazatlán in Mexico. So art has always been like a huge. Presence in my life. Both my mom and my grandmother used to be art history teachers. When I was a kid. My mom and my aunt, they would organize themed summer camps when we were kids.
So it's been very present and I feel that since we were kids, both my sister and I, we, we grew up. With this curiosity for the world like that, that it was like very instilled for us. Curiosity for the world. And I've always been so in love with photography and just like I would spend hours as a kid looking into magazines, into National Geographics, I have like a huge stack of National Geographics that I collected since collected since I was a kid.
So I feel like we grew up within this environment when we were taught a lot about the world. And to be curious about the world where I live in Mexico, it's, we have a lot of American influence. So when, like back in the nineties, the whole range was to like, go to the [00:02:00] us, go to Disneyland, go to the malls, and my parents were sure that we also got to know our own country.
So we did a lot of road trips. I, I think it's very related to like the way I grew up. Having that, growing up with that curiosity for the world. And I've always loved photography and travel and I growing up I, I have like this little voice in the back of my brain that was always like, I want travel to be my life.
I want travel to be my life. And back in my twenties I do wish I had traveled more. Then when I was turning 30, I was going through this like weird identity crisis moment. I guess it was like the thirties crisis or something. And I just decided to jump and go somewhere alone. And I went to Bali and I bought Alexa West Travel Guide Alexa, who you talked to in a previous episode.
I bought her travel guide to Bali. When I was in Bali by myself, COVID happened and I ended up getting stuck there on the other side of the world. I was like, the world was in the, the craziest moment of, you know, like [00:03:00] in my, in my entire life. And I ended up staying there for over a year and I met Alexa and we became creative partners and all of a sudden travel had become my life.
Like that trip and that moment through COVID really changed my life and it just felt one of those really aligned moments when you're like, ah, this is it. Like this is where everything has been mounting up to and. After COVID, I ended up me meeting my boyfriend who was Spanish. So now I live in Spain, so now I'm like traveling back and forth between Mexico and Spain All the time I meet with Alexa somewhere else.
Suddenly travel became my life, and even when I'm not traveling, like full time, because I, I do live in Spain and I love living there. My entire life revolves around creating travel guides for women. So my life now revolves around travel. That's how I ended up working in the travel industry, and it makes me so happy.
I really think that travel is, it's so, so [00:04:00] educational for us. I do think it's really important to see the world even. You don't have to go to the other side of the world, but I do think like learning to see the world with open eyes and open mind really changes you as a person and really forms you as a person.
James Petrossi: Now talk about that creativity. It's so cool that you grew up in an environment where the arts were so prevalent around you, and when you did start to travel and explore in that innate curiosity that you had, what is it that you like to capture as a photographer? What are you looking for when you're out traveling?
Emilia: I love looking at daily life in different places. I think sometimes when we're traveling, we're looking for like the big moments on the big landmarks, but what I really love to observe is how. Daily routines and daily lives look like for different people in different places around the world. I think having little windows into how and what real lives look like in different corners of the world.
I think that's something really, really beautiful because that's what really speaks about who we are. I think it's like the small moments that really speak about a culture and a person [00:05:00] and ways of life versus the big moments in travel. And something else I really, really love is. Culture and crafts. I love watching processes and how, for example, in Indonesia, how masks are made, or textiles or here in Mexico.
Food, you know, I love looking at how things are made, how processors happen to create things, and I love documenting that too. I think it's a also like a really beautiful window into a culture.
James Petrossi: And it must be interesting because. You know, the creative process is beautiful. It's organic, it's in flow, it's ever evolving, and it's fun to how all of these different cultures are essentially putting their fingerprints on the world through the arts. Now, with social media, you're in a unique circumstance because you're a photographer, and obviously when you're capturing things, you wanna share those things.
So I'm curious just a little bit about. Your own relationship with social media as an artist and as a creator, [00:06:00] how you've had to adapt your craft to different channels, and what's that been like for you? How has it just holistically, how has it impacted you?
Emilia: I would say a lot. Social media for me, Instagram started when I was like 21, 22, and it started as, as a really fun way to share undocumented little moments of your life with friends. But then it just became this huge machine that we know now. And years ago I used to paint a lot. I'm also a painter and I used to paint so much more.
Now I'm really focused, way more focused into in photography, but I do can't see like a before and after with my painting and my, like my artwork. With social media, I feel that we are not designed to have so much input all the time. I think social media can be an incredible asset for artists because work can reach really far corners of the world.
And now artists don't have to be dependent on galleries or like distribution channels. I feel social media has really democratized art in an amazing way, but [00:07:00] also. I feel like it has impacted the creative process, not just for me, but for a lot of artists in a very not so positive way, because we are, we have too many influences now.
We have too many visual stimulus. We have too many, like way too much input about everything. So it's really hard. I feel that that doesn't affect your work. And there's some things that go viral, some things that don't, some things that work. So I feel that now social media has somehow like dictated the art that we create and the, the, like, the, the things we, they produ, we produce creatively like social media.
Like the format has become some kind of like a shape, like a mold for what we should be creating versus what we want to be creating. I feel that that's also one of the reasons that I've really found myself loving photography is because.
I feel like I'm documenting life versus I'm creating content. I love photography how it can be a window into the real world and the real, the realness of life [00:08:00] versus creating something.
'cause at least personally I can say in my other line of work, in art and drawing and painting, social media did impact my work. I am able to see like before and after and how I felt before, you know, like when you were a kid or you're younger and you know, have all, all of this pressure on you and you're just like creating freely.
But now social media, you're thinking like, oh, is what I'm creating is, is it gonna perform well? Is it gonna go viral? Is it gonna have engagement? Is it gonna do well? You know, so it's, I feel it's a lot of strings attached to creativity nowadays with social media.
I feel social media is such like a double-edged sword for artists and creatives.
'cause on one hand it's like an amazing display for your work to go as far as possible. But on the other hand, it comes with a lot of strings attached for the creative process.
James Petrossi: Now, what about the subjects that you capture? Because life has changed and there used to be a lot of moments in humanity that were just with two people, but now technology's pretty much omnipresent. [00:09:00] And when you are capturing people in the real world, in those beautiful moments or or elements of culture, how has technology and their role with technology impacted what you capture?
Do you notice subjects or more on technology and you have to find, it's harder to find those moments? Or do you think that those moments are actually more so there and available?
Emilia: If I'm walking down the street and doing, I don't know, some kind of street photography, just like documenting what I see, something that I do notice is that people, like everyone's looking at the screen, everyone's looking down. If you're in a line waiting for something, even if you're in a plane, everyone's looking down.
But I think that's also why I gravitate a a lot toward. Handmade processes. One of the, one of my favorite things to document is things that are happening by hand. Cooking behind the scenes in restaurants. I love documenting hands. I don't always take faces because, because I don't wanna invade people's [00:10:00] privacy and personal space, but I love documenting things that are happening.
You know, physical things are happening, a plate being served, a dish being prepared, a basket that's being handwoven, things like that. So I feel that I am naturally gravitating. I have like this, like what I'm looking for naturally with the camera in hand is things are happening in real life. But I do notice because I'm walking around and I'm looking and I'm observing and I'm just like looking around and documenting what I see.
I do notice how much we are all looking down at our phones.
James Petrossi: And how have you managed your own relationship with social media as an artist? Because the opportunities for exposure are so big, like you talked about, but it is that double-edged sword. So do you try to make peace living inside of this digital quagmire.
Emilia: It is hard. It has been a hard journey. I'm gonna like, and this, it's something I've been working a lot on this year. I've been really working on consuming less and creating more. I feel like [00:11:00] that's the balance. I feel like we, social media at the end of the day is a tool that can be a very positive thing, but also if we don't use it correctly, it can be a very.
Negative thing. So I think it's something that we need to learn how to work with and we need to see it as a tool, a work asset, a work tool that we, we need to work, like use it with balance. Same with with computers or other kinds of screens or other kind of business tools.
I think we need to come back to see it as a tool and not just as this crutch. For life and for me, one of the things that I realized last year, I felt just like so creatively burned out and it was because I was like consuming so much. I was consuming more than I was creating. So one of my goals this year has been to create more consum, way less, and that's been like a way for me to like make peace with social media a lot, to spend less time scrolling and more time photographing.
Some weeks when I'm just working on the computer and have like a really normal routine. I give myself small. Challenges, like, okay, today I'm gonna walk somewhere, even in my daily [00:12:00] life, I'm gonna have the camera on me. I'm gonna take three photos, or I'm gonna look for this color, I'm gonna look for this.
So my challenges here has been to create more than I, than I scroll, because it's so easy to fall into like the, the mindless loop of scrolling. And I feel like that's when we, that's when it takes over us, and that's when it becomes a hindrance instead of an asset. And creatively like inspiration wise.
It has been a positive thing because I have found artists that I love and that have really fed my work. I even, I haven't even made amazing friends through social media that I have then met in, in real life. So it can be a beautiful thing, but I feel that once we. Let it take over our lives. That's when it becomes such a toxic thing.
And I think it happens so quietly that we don't, like one moment we wake up and we're like, oh man, social media has really taken over my life. Like I spend so much time scrolling. I'm using this app called Opal. I dunno if you've heard of it.
James Petrossi: of that. Yeah.
Emilia: I, I think it's amazing. I think it should be like a default setting on phones.
You can like [00:13:00] limit your apps. You have like sessions and when I'm working, when I'm having like a super focused work session on my computer, I like, my, my apps are locked and it, it every week it gives you a, a report on your screen time. So every, every Monday mornings like, oh man, this is how you did screen time wise.
And that's also been like a nice mirror to analyze my habits around screens and social media and just like be more. More mindful and more assertive on how I wanna work with this tool because it is a tool and what my relationship with it looks like.
James Petrossi: Yeah, I think you brought up a great point about creating more and consuming less. Sometimes creators go to social media 'cause they feel like that's where the inspiration is. But to your point earlier in the conversation, you can get overwhelmed, compare, feel like you're not doing enough, and sometimes the intuitive nature of just being in the world. And looking for those creative artifacts that inspire us, those natural wonders really help foster that creativity. Now, today's about shared [00:14:00] moments. This lesson, it's about quality time with the people that we love. You know, whether it's getting hands on with crafts or taking a walk together, looking at the sunset, as you find balance within your own social media use, how has that strengthened? Your relationships with those in your inner circle, or how does it afford new types of connection and time with them?
Emilia: I think that's also an ongoing process for me. It's been a huge step forward this year, I feel, with my own relationship with my phone and how I wanna interact with it. And now I feel I'm able to like, see how it's affecting my dynamics with other people. For example, there are moments when I'm like, I don't know, I'm in the couch.
My boyfriend, my boyfriend's sitting next to me and we're like, eat scrolling. And now I feel it's one of those, like the first step is to see it and then you can address it. You know, like. See the problem and then address the problem. I feel like I'm in the in-between step of like seeing the problem and addressing the problem with my relationships.
So there are moments that now that we are like, oh, we were both on our [00:15:00] phone. Drop it, you know, like, like, leave the phone. Leave the phone. Or to like, not bring my phone into the bedroom and like just scroll, like, be scrolling before bed. Or if I'm sitting down to have coffee with friends, to like not have the phone on the table, like put it away.
Just be more mindful of those like little things. They're actually little things, but they can become big things. You know, it's just like such an omnipresence of our phones all the time. And I think the excuse is very easily like, oh, it's for work. It's for work. It's for work. Yes, it's for work work. But I feel that we do need, need to create spaces where we can put our phone away and where we can be challenging those habits of just like automatically opening social media, automatically scrolling and just really be.
Conscious of, okay. I'm sitting next to you. I don't want you to feel that I'm not listening to you because I'm on my phone or even because I'm even holding your phone. It's, it's become like a, like a, like an emotional support kind of thing to have in your hand. 'cause we are, I mean, at least my generation and the generation below me, we [00:16:00] are Sian with such high anxiety.
Phones have become approached. They have become this emotional support thing that some kind somehow ease our anxiety. So I think it's really important to like see it, like see the problem, like sit down with a problem and see it as a mirror and be like, oh man, like this is really, this is really become an at attach, like a, like an attachment to my hand or like an extens, an extension to my hand.
And that, that I, that scares me. You know, sometimes I'm like, oh, I haven't dropped my phone in a while. That's, that scares me. So right now, like what I'm really working on is with, in my relationships. I don't want the phone to be ever like omni present with my friends, with my boyfriend, with my family.
This weekend we're like, we're all getting, my whole family's getting together for Christmas and my sister and I, we have been talking a lot about, okay, let's do the thing where everyone puts their phone in a basket if we're all sitting on the table. 'cause, like I was telling you earlier, I have a nephew who's about to turn 13 and you know, he's, he's at that age with work.
He wants social media. He wants to [00:17:00] just like jump in into like the social media world. He has friends and classmates that already have uncapped access to social media and I think that is so big to like be 13 and have uncapped access to social media and everything that's out there. I think that's so, so big.
It's like a huge wave. I mean, at that age, we're not, we don't know how to surf.
James Petrossi: Mm-hmm.
Emilia: So my sister, she has been resisting a lot to like, give him full access to everything, which I think she's been doing an amazing job at it. And now nowadays, you see how Australia has banned social media for teenagers below 16th.
The European Union is also rolling new laws like that for, for teenagers. And I, I mean, I, I don't think our brains are ready for all of that. So it's been a very big conversation in my family this year because we're, we're. We are seeing my nephew who's about to jump into this world and it's, it feels so big.
And this year we, we wanna like extend the invitation to everyone to not be glued to their phones because we want to set [00:18:00] a good example for him. So we, we wanna do like the, put your phone in the basket and whoever grabs their phone first has to do a funny challenge or something like that. It's something that we are working on in my family as well, because I think, like seeing it with my nephew has been like a, also like a wake up call.
How it affects me, how it's affecting him, how is, how it's shaping the world. He's stepping into how it's shaping my world. It's been a really, really good mirror for me and for my family to think more about social media and phones and screens and how they, they affect us and how they affect our dynamics and how it's like how it's going to affect him growing up.
James Petrossi: Now you brought up this moment that's on the couch, and I think a lot of us have had those moments where you're sitting next to a friend, a boyfriend, a spouse, a loved one, and you're both and it's this unconscious behavior. You're just rolling with it.
Emilia: Mm-hmm.
James Petrossi: then you brought up bringing that awareness to be conscious of it. There's a battle that goes on there, and the battle
Emilia: Mm-hmm.
James Petrossi: [00:19:00] you want all of these dopamine rushes. You want everything coming from the feed. But then I'm curious, like when you do put the phone down and you both identify, wait a minute, like we're both here with each other. We wanna be present with each other.
I. How hard is it to get into the new flow of not being reliant or being at a dinner table and not being reliant on showing a picture on your phone to someone, you know, using it as that sort of social crutch with the people that we are, we're really close with that we should just be able to like hang out with. How have you noticed your own self adapting to those transitions as you're going through this journey?
Emilia: At first, over like the first few minutes, it feels weird and I feel like it takes me a transition moment to like really flow into the present moment and into the conversation. But once I'm just like ju in the conversation. Then an hour has passed and I'm like, oh, this has been an amazing conversation.
But then I also have an like anxiety, like guilt or remorse, panics being like, I haven't [00:20:00] checked my phone. What if something important is needed for me? You know? So it's, it's, it's also a balance. But I think once we're in a conversation with someone, it's easy to forget the phone. Once you're like in there, in the moment laughing, it's really easy to forget your phone.
I think we just need to like relearn that or. Maybe it's not in a conversation. Maybe it's like, go grab a paper and do something. Do something with your hands. The past month a friend started to teach me how to knit. I suck at it, but I start, just started teaching because I wanted to have more, do more things with my hands when I'm, when I'm in the couch and we're watching a movie or something and I feel like I need to be doing something else because, you know, like our brains are expecting those extra heads of dopamine.
I'm keeping my hands busy by knitting. So I think that that has been like. I guess like a healthier grudge for my hands or like my habit of looking for that extra, extra something for my brain. Also, I have like a very A DHD brain that's jumping from place to place all the time. So my brain has always a lot of taps open, and I think that's also [00:21:00] why it's constantly seeking in my phone or like, like an extra source of stimulus.
So doing things with my hand. With my hands is, is something that I come back to when I, what, like my, like the way I transition back into the present moment. knitting has been like one of my la latest experiments. But also cooking. Whenever I'm like, okay, I need to walk away from the screens, walk away from my phone, I go into the kitchen and I cook, and if I have my hands dirty, I'm not gonna touch my phone.
So getting your hands dirty is an amazing way too, to like, to not touch your phone. So I, I have found that. Doing things with your hand, it is a great way to, to like retrain your brain and retrain yourself to not touch your phone.
James Petrossi: Yeah. I love that. That's so fun to get creative. It made me wanna create, like leave the feed knitting kits, but it's anything
Emilia: it can be scrapbooking, journaling, drawing, like playing with like Play-Doh, whatever, but doing things with your hand and it's, I don't remember like the actual science and data behind it, but it is proven that doing things with your hand [00:22:00] rewires your brain. It has incredible, I mean, not benefit, but it does have incredible effects on our brains.
So doing with your hands, I feel it's something that is one of the biggest solutions to being on our phones all the time. Going back to writing by hand, going back to drawing, to doing crafts, to just getting your hands steady, even if, even if it's gardening or cooking or whatever.
James Petrossi: Now there's people right now that are. Towards the end of this 30 day challenge, and they're listening to this podcast, they're looking for help
What encouragement, what advice do you have for anyone that's wrestling with the relationship with social media and, and wants to find more peace with it?
Emilia: The biggest thing that I would say is that you're not alone. it makes me really happy to see that there is this. Shift happening around the world with screen wise, the laws that have been like now passed in Australia, the, like, the conversations that are happening in, in the European Union about this and also like, [00:23:00] even it's, it's, it's ironic because it's things that you see on social media, but more and more you're seeing how brands are having physical popups and, and in events,
and you can also see how in travel like hotels are offering like off the grid offline spaces for group trips for retreats, we, we are doing off the grid and offline retreats for women. We're doing this yearly river rafting trips and we're recreating more trips where women can come and be off the grid or at least very much applying for a couple days because this is something that people do want.
We are collectively gravitating back towards offline. There's people like spending a lot of money in super luxurious journals because people wanna go, come back to paper. There's been a search on paper, like, like tangible books. There's this girl. That again, I found her in social media. So there's some, a little bit of irony in this, but there's this girl who just launched a line of physical phones.
I think her username is Ask Cat GBT if I'm not mistaken. But she, a few months ago, she launched a line of [00:24:00] physical phones, like court phones, like old school phones that they connect with your phone. So that you can leave your phone somewhere else in the house completely, but you can use like a sit down and have a conversation with a friend or a family member with an old school rotatory phone or like a wall phone like we used to use back in the nineties.
You know, people want that like physical experience again. So for me, seeing all of that feels very hopeful that we, that we don't wanna be consumed by social media and by the screens anymore. We at least want an in between.
James Petrossi: And what's next with your journey? Your journey as a creator, your journey in the arts, your journey in travel, and then also how social media is going to fit within that construct.
Emilia: I feel that it's, for me, it's more to continue learning that social media is a business tool. To use it as a business tool. And that's something as not, not as something that defines my life. Something that I would love to do in the near future is to launch a collection of prints, photography, prints.
So I also wanna [00:25:00] take photography from the screen to offline, to reel. I love postcards. I love letters. I love sending physical letters. I would love to possibly have like a print, like a snail mail club. Or physical postcards. I would love to take photography and travel from like the online and the online content that we're seeing all the time, to real physical things that you can have and touch.
So that's something that I am really looking forward to this year. And the other thing that we are doing alongside Alexa, we have our, our collection of travel guides. And a lot of people, they've been like, why are you still doing paperback books? Why are you still doing like physical books? No. Like, why don't you just rely on digital?
It's like, no, because there's no feeling like having your physical travel guide that you can like highlight and, you know, like. Mark the, like, the, the corners of the pages and have your tattered worn down traveled guidebook. You know, like we have been faithful to the idea of paperbacks and, and. Just, and not staying in the online world in travel, which I feel like travel has gravitated so much to online content [00:26:00] in the past few years.
And we are like, no, like we need that physical component. Travel is physical, so we do need physical spaces in travel as well. And we all, we are also launching more group trips this year. Many of them design and focused on being offline and off the grid. Either totally or partially. But we are creating more spaces, like real life connection spaces where women can meet other women.
When you can like meet new people where you can actually sit down and have a conversation and just forget about social media on your phone and all those things.
James Petrossi: I love it. I love the disconnection trips. I love of getting your hands dirty, getting tactile, and having that awareness when you're with people to say, wait a minute, like there's a different way to do this. Let's get into this
Emilia: Yeah,
James Petrossi: flow. Really inspiring it. I, I loved your insights.
Emilia: River rafting trips. They are amazing. It's five days where you're completely off the grid camping on rivers going down like the Snake River, the rogue river in the us and like by [00:27:00] day five, you're like, I don't wanna go back to my phone. I don't wanna turn on my phone. You're like, you really, it really reboots you and really resets you.
And of course you have to, you come back and line, but it really, it has an amazing impact on you being like being away from, from your phone and from like the news and like the. Or like the constant stream of information we have 24 7. It it, it's an amazing vacation for your brain.
James Petrossi: Thank you so much. I love the idea of taking that amazing vacation for your brain and for all of those listening, thank you so much for being part of this journey. You only have a few days to go. Emilia, really appreciate you've been such a great guest today,
Emilia: No, thank you. Being an amazing host. I really, really appreciate you having me here and being able to talk about this topic.
James Petrossi: and for those of you listening, please share. Leave the feed with a friend. Have an epic day, and don't be afraid to disconnect. Thanks again, Amelia.
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