What This Is.
The other night, a friend of mine and I were talking about Facebook and how a lot of times, it can make us feel pretty lousy.
Because everyone puts their best face on Facebook. In many cases, literally. Note that for my current profile picture, I went with this:
And not this:
It’s been widely noted that for status updates, people only post their highlight reels, not their backstage. Even though rationally we know better, it’s easy to assume these perfect snapshots of Sunday pancake breakfasts and sun-dappled hikes and ever-smiling kids reflect the full truth of that person’s life. And that by contrast, since we ate cereal for breakfast and spent the afternoon on the couch and omg I don’t even have a boyfriend yet, then that must mean our lives–and thus we ourselves–are huge disappointments.
My friend and I agreed it’d make us feel better if people were more honest, but she made a good point. “When I’m honest on Facebook and say I’m having a bad day, nobody wants to hear it,” she said, “I only get Likes when I say everything’s awesome.”
But of course, outside of The LEGO Movie, nobody has a life in which everything is awesome. So I’m going to be honest here in this space. As honest as I can be, as honest as I want to challenge myself to be. I know it helps me immensely when someone shows their cracks, when I realize they share the same doubts and insecurities I have. And since I’ve had my share of Not Awesome over the past few months, l find myself relying on this type of openness from other people even more. So it’s only fair to be a little more open myself.
Back on New Year’s Eve, I wrote a Facebook post about how I spent much of 2013 trying to overcome perfectionism and the wallop of self-doubt that hit me after I left my job. I was surprised and comforted by the responses I got from people who sympathized with those feelings. One friend texted to thank me for posting what I did, because she had seen me as someone who’s “got her shit together and I obviously don’t” and how she forgets people have struggles, so “I end up judging myself against them and then feel alienated.”
Her comments made me tear up when I read them, because a) I very much do NOT have my shit together and b) I realized I was not alone. And that’s my main reason for starting this blog. I’m not doing it to complain about my problems or imply that my problems are more important than anyone else’s, but simply to acknowledge that those problems exist. Because I’m not perfect and you’re not perfect and neither is that person on Facebook who’s making Sunday pancakes and going on hikes and hugging their adorable kids.
You have no idea what’s going on behind the scenes. You don’t know that the college friend who just bought a dream house is getting tons of financial help from his parents. You don’t know that the couple smiling over a fancy restaurant dinner had a huge fight in the car on the way home. You don’t know that the girl who just posted the baby bump photo where everyone told her how pretty she looked has been crying herself to sleep for the past two weeks.
Which leads me to my first official post: How Am I Doing?