Landscape obsession, physical exercise & social media delusion

So I have written on here before about my love of landscape photography. There are a few reasons I love it so deeply, the first is the simple pleasure of doing something creative outside, it's liberating, clears my mind and get's me away from the f*ck**g computer. Dragging yourself to places that are out of the way and wild, just sitting there watching stuff happen is so unbelievably good for your soul. Humans are of the World. Without it we are nothing! If it was down to me everybody would be prescribed standing in front of waterfall for at least an hour a week. I cannot overstate how good it is for giving your mind time to breathe, it makes all the trappings of modern life, so stupid and inconsequential. The second part of it is exercise, adventure and using my slowly degrading body for what it was designed. I am steadily marching towards my 40's and sitting in front of a computer is not what I was built for (nor any one else for that matter). Some of these photos were taken from the ridge of Beinn an Lochainn in the Arrochar alps. It's a serious haul up there in sub zero temperatures, 45 mile an hour winds and at points thigh high snow. I am so happy with the image I got of the spindrift whipping off the tops, not just because I love the look of it but also because of the effort I had put in to see it occur in reality. You see a lot of the time it's not the picture itself but what you have put into that matters. Whether it's physical or emotional. However this only matters to me I suppose. The average viewer will just see a picture and judge it on the merits of their own taste. Although I believe an image can portray many things to people I don't think that images speak as loudly as they once did.This of course brings me onto social media. I've had a few images picked up on instagram by aggregator accounts and they were well received, getting 10's of thousands of likes. This of course has amounted to diddly squat for me. Our creative culture now seems to have a very strong reliance around likes and followers, there is a sheep mentality to all this. And often the most poignant and beautiful work is sidelined in preference of more digestible images. Perhaps I am missing the point, I mean social media is an intrinsically disposable and transient medium. It's strange magnetism is both mysterious and irksome. I mean I check it all the time. Why do I check it? What's the point? Do I want people to like my images? Does it matter if they do? Will anyone ever buy a print?  All these questions and more continue to go un answered. There are further areas of collective endorsement that may be more salient to ones career, like awards or god forbid running an exhibition. Despite this minor social media success I am left cold and confused as to what I, or anyone else gets out of it. It is true that when someone I admire be it a photographer, artist or musician whose art I respect likes my stuff it does give me kick. I am under to illusion that landscape photography on it's own will ever make me a living wage. I don't do it for money though, I don't do it for likes and followers. I do it because I love it because it makes me feel connected to my country; to myself. I do it for myself! For my own selfish reasons and that's OK. I often seek out validation and critique but when it comes down to it I don't need it or even want it. As I grow older and friends and relatives die I continue to question what the point of all this is. Will people have their lifetime social media statistics carved into their headstones in the future? Here lies John Smith, loved by his wife and family, he leaves 679 followers and recieved 10,,342 likes.I have to say that although the digital world is undoubtably important to my job it is not important to me or my very best work. Prints, exhibitions and books are the only mediums that really matter to me. So that's, that, expect copious amounts of social media posts pushing you to buy prints and books you don't really want. Just because you 'liked' something doesn't mean you might want to see it on a medium that can actually support it's colour range, detail and artistic intention. Here I am sitting at screen, writing about how much I hate screen. I'll probably go home now and look at a screen. But maybe, just maybe... I'll put my wellies on and go and stand at the bottom of a waterfall.