100 Stories
100 Stories / A little more present.
12.9.16
100 Stories // * 11. A post-summer comedown.
Seven years of blogging has been quite the experience. This online space has taken me to places beyond my wildest dreams and often it feels as though for seven years, I haven’t quite stopped ‘being online’. Nowadays, social media has become a sort of frenzy, a consume-all kind of phenomena where we’re never quite content with what’s on offer. There’s the ‘see now, buy now’ mantra, a well-intentioned girl boss and ‘you can have it all’ mentality that we all - myself included - get swept up into. And, this summer, I’ve found myself subconsciously stepping back a touch and becoming a little more present.
Sometimes I turn on my MacBook and put fingertips to keyboard and the words aren’t quite there for social media. When the world is quite literally your oyster, sometimes the broadened horizons become a little too much. This once-tiny community has blossomed into something none of us could ever have imagined back in 2008 and I found myself unsure of my place, a little uneasy in my footing. It never does well to compare one to their peers and, well, social media is rife for comparison and unconscious judgment. I think back to a time where I was a little less confident in myself but much more confident in my words and, there, I remember just why I adored blogging. The words. I love to write (dance) to the beat of my own drum, no editor, no style guide to adhere to, no one-way to be. It’s hard to remember that in a sea of us bloggers all striving for different things yet the same. Maybe what works for my blog, in my standing, doesn’t translate well. I’m not sure.
This summer I’ve found myself slipping away ever so slightly from social media and embracing being present ‘IRL’ instead. I think I’m happier now than I have been in a while and, you know what? I haven’t needed social media to confirm that to me. Some of the best moments this summer have been entirely undocumented, stored safely in my mind to steal back in moments of stolen time, and I like it that way. This is certainly an age of oversharing and questionable decision making and as summer comes to a close, I’m enjoying - preferring, even - letting moments influence my words rather than become them.
Here’s to being a little more present, in autumn.
