Every once in awhile, I stop blogging and start voraciously reading the blogs of friends, family members, and complete strangers instead. It's usually a whole lot of fun. Usually.
The other day, one of my married Facebook friends shared a blog post from a woman who was talking about how disheartening it is to be asked, "Are you pregnant? When are you going to be?" all the time. Now, in reality, that blog post is not really applicable to me. There's not really a reason for me to have read it, but I did. And now I can't stop reading this woman's blog. I'm on page 47, and I can't stop. She's a young, married LDS woman with two little kids and they live in New York City and they travel all over the world and she and her husband take stunning photographs of EVERYTHING. They literally have their life documented every single day, their children photographed THOUSANDS of times.
And I kind of want to cry. I shouldn't have read her blog.
It's weird to be a single blogger sometimes. It's not weird because I feel unused to it, but weird because I'm in a different place than a lot of my friends. I can't blame anyone for that, but I can certainly feel disheartened about it. They're having babies and travelling and serving missions and being married. And me? I'm trying to get by, trying to make plans, trying to figure out how I'm going to reach a few dreams of mine that seem impossibly out of reach. A lot of bloggers start their blogs at their marriages. I started mine when I was still in high school trying to figure things out. Sometimes I feel a bit pathetic because of it.
Truth be told, I don't blog about my life a whole lot because of blogs like the one I've been reading. They make me feel insignificant. But I love blogging. I do. I want to do more of it, in fact. If my voice changes, if the content and tone of this blog changes, it's only because I'm trying to live more. Sure, I don't have her life, I have mine, but it's just as important, if entirely different.
It was a terrible thing to read that blog. But maybe I can learn how to make this life, my life better because of it.
The other day, one of my married Facebook friends shared a blog post from a woman who was talking about how disheartening it is to be asked, "Are you pregnant? When are you going to be?" all the time. Now, in reality, that blog post is not really applicable to me. There's not really a reason for me to have read it, but I did. And now I can't stop reading this woman's blog. I'm on page 47, and I can't stop. She's a young, married LDS woman with two little kids and they live in New York City and they travel all over the world and she and her husband take stunning photographs of EVERYTHING. They literally have their life documented every single day, their children photographed THOUSANDS of times.
And I kind of want to cry. I shouldn't have read her blog.
It's weird to be a single blogger sometimes. It's not weird because I feel unused to it, but weird because I'm in a different place than a lot of my friends. I can't blame anyone for that, but I can certainly feel disheartened about it. They're having babies and travelling and serving missions and being married. And me? I'm trying to get by, trying to make plans, trying to figure out how I'm going to reach a few dreams of mine that seem impossibly out of reach. A lot of bloggers start their blogs at their marriages. I started mine when I was still in high school trying to figure things out. Sometimes I feel a bit pathetic because of it.
Truth be told, I don't blog about my life a whole lot because of blogs like the one I've been reading. They make me feel insignificant. But I love blogging. I do. I want to do more of it, in fact. If my voice changes, if the content and tone of this blog changes, it's only because I'm trying to live more. Sure, I don't have her life, I have mine, but it's just as important, if entirely different.
It was a terrible thing to read that blog. But maybe I can learn how to make this life, my life better because of it.
Hello, Ms. Rees. What follows might be somewhat of a rant, and probably says more about me than you, but this blog entry really affected me and I felt I had to say something. Specifically, about your encounter with this young New York couple's blog. I believe I have felt something similar, a feeling of inferiority when confronted by the successes of others, especially when they succeed in the very same endeavors you hold dear. While this has probably been felt by people since the beginning of humanity, I think that our current internet culture has turned this from something that people just had to deal with to something that truly is a problem. I feel like our culture, through the increased use of social media, has come to celebrate narcissism.
ReplyDeleteWhile I hesitate to call someone a narcissist without meeting them or reading their blog, your description of thousands of photos, especially of their young children, makes me think I might have a case for describing at least their blog as narcissistic. But that's really not a bad thing. What I think is wrong is how our culture makes it normal to share every part of our lives, and with that sharing, compare ourselves to others. I feel like this culture norm of sharing and comparing is emotionally destructive. It's destructive because we are all in different places in our lives, with different struggles and paths. And no one should feel inferior because someone else because of how their life “compares” with someone else.
What I appreciate about your blog is that you don't share all the details of your life. You aren't a narcissist. You share your thoughts. Sharing thoughts is a difference of kind, not degree, from sharing the those everyday details of your life. And your thoughts are, by far, more interesting than the inane, curated details of someone's everyday life, no matter how exceptional that life is.