HEY FRIENDS!
(Header pic is me drinking wine in my very snuggly bed with the AC cranked all the way up & a pumpkin scented candle going because that is my MOOD from now to December AND because I have no pictures from this summer that I can remotely tie into this)
Over the summer I decided to go on a bit of a social media cleanse. I have such mixed feelings about summer (mostly negative, I am sweaty), especially now that I'm in the real world having a job and not being drunk and useless on the Vineyard from June - August, & I made the decision to take a step back from following everyone else's lives to focus on improving mine. Its very easy to get caught up in everyone else's vacations, parties, what have you, & convince yourself that no one else has a job and you're missing out on everything. Had to get away from those #badvibes.
I was talking (read:complaining) to my mom that I felt like I was the only person who was working all summer & that I've never had a summer when I wasn't on the beach every week, when she brought me back to reality with the painful but effective dig of "yeah, you've never been employed before." OK, TRUE. FAIR. I might have been on the Vineyard more frequently but I suppose there is some value in no longer being a 20-something still tapping my mom on the shoulder like "heyyyyyyyyy mommyyyy, can you buy me a bottle of wine please." Not to say that doesn't still happen, but it is nice having if but an ounce of financial autonomy.
After living in hell last summer, I needed to give myself the mental break. For whatever reason, its a lot easier to tell yourself "its okay that I'm not where everyone else is, I have a lot going on" when you're in crisis mode than when you're in the process of recovering and rebuilding. It takes time to build yourself back up and get to where you want to be, and it wasn't healthy for me to constantly be comparing myself to other people. Yeah, everything is so much better now than last summer, but I'm still playing catch up! I'm still dealing with a lot and it's difficult to remind myself that my pace is perfectly fine! It really, really is. The more time I spent on social media, the more time I spent thinking that I'm not up to par or where I should be in life comparatively - that's not only untrue, but a pretty dangerous frame of mind to be in. It's so important that we understand for ourselves that we're all living much different lives than our peers & that doing *our* best is all that matters. Social media is a great tool to inspire and motivate, but if you feel like its primarily making you feel poorly about yourself, I definitely recommend taking a little sabbatical.
Over this 3 month period I made a conscious effort to focus on where and who I want to be & the steps I can take to get there. I took a break from being SUPER INTENSE FITNESS ALLY (TM) & while its been great (albeit painful) to get back into it, I definitely needed the vacay from the 5am wakeup calls & brown rice. It was nice to be a little more lax in that area & focus my energy on finding things that make me happy, keep me motivated, and most importantly, calm me the hell down. I am SO high strung. I don't know when this became a thing, I'm sure it was at some point in college, but I am the most high strung, stressed out, anxiety-ridden person I know & I desperately needed to work on that over the summer.
One thing I did in an effort to stop comparing, be happier, and be more present in the moment was avoiding posting on Instagram. I've discussed this with a few of my friends & it's CRAZY how much we do, almost exclusively, for the 'gram. I've done things I don't really want to, ordered food or drinks that are cute/trendy over what I really wanted, spent way too much time worrying about making moments "gram worthy" rather than just enjoying them, and it got to a point that it felt like I was manufacturing a life that even while curated specifically to *look* the way I wanted it to, wasn't a good representation of myself. We've ALL done it. It's so unnecessarily stressful! Like, the amount of times I've been more anxious to go somewhere than excited because I don't feel like having my picture taken - stupid. I felt like nothing I did was ever good enough & there was always someone better than me. I try to avoid that approach to life, the "someone will always be better than you" sentiment, and instead focus on doing what makes me happy and brings me joy. When it comes down to it, no one is better than you - it's all a matter of perspective. Like what you like, do what you want to do, and stop comparing yourself! Social media depicts A LOT of people doing the same thing so many times that its easy to start thinking "oh, I should like that, everyone else does & they seem happy" and consequently convince yourself that ____ will make you happy, when that's not who you are! I almost bought clothes from fashion nova lollllll that's when I knew something was wrong. I got like, mildly jealous of people ordering oysters because I'm allergic to them. Can't go anaphylactic for the gram.
Now that I'm getting back to blogging I fully expect to be posting more on social media, but doing so in a healthier way. I think focusing on creating content that prioritizes truthfulness over curation will make blogging more successful and **sustainable** for me (it gets hard to put out content when you get the idea that your's can't be good enough), and more helpful & enjoyable for those of you so kindly reading. That's my goal moving forward with the blog!
So that's what the focus has been on this summer! Getting it together, looking at life more positively, remembering what my personality is & what I actually like (how fucking sad is that lol), all that fun stuff! Rob and I are in our apartment & its starting to come together nicely, hanging out with my friends more and not being such a little herm, working on the next steps career wise, a lot of stuff I'll get into in their own little individual posts because this is getting long winded. Wanted to make a little post on being back in the game and hopefully get a few more posts up this week & keep the momentum.
Hope you all have had a great summer and are as excited as I am for college football & non-oppressive weather!