I had a LiveJournal from 2002 until 2015. That's from age 15 to age 28, and I used to post on that thing almost every single day. As you can imagine, I grew and changed a lot in those years, and although I've never had the patience or the gag reflex to revisit the thoughts of my adolescent years, they remain there. That world was everything to me; I was valued as a member of multiple communities and respected as a writer. Sure, most of us were young, but we were connected, even if we didn’t know each other. I made MSPaint illustrations of myself in different imaginary situations to accompany my writings. I won an award at one point for my blog at the age of 19. I met a guy on LJ that I ended up dating for a couple of years; a long distance relationship between San Francisco and Chicago. We’d take the Amtrak to see each other whenever possible. Both being obsessed with art and creative expression at the time, we introduced each other to graffiti, which ended up being an introduction into a world of typography for me that would later contribute to my career. He taught me the basics of photography and post-production in Photoshop, which I later made my own and also turned into a lifestyle and career. All the while I’d express every intimate detail of our relationship on my public outlet, which at one point even resulted in being asked to be a guest on a radio show in San Francisco, to speak about my choices to make so many detailed parts of my life so public. When I wrote, I left nothing out. Ever.
I always wrote; I was good at it, and it was a release. I was an unconventional kid who needed expression to live and breathe, and I expressed myself, most commonly when I shouldn’t have. I’ll tell you, not much has changed, except that now at age 30, I at least attempt to suppress my actual feelings instead of openly embracing the trouble they’ll inevitably get me in. Or at least, I HAVE suppressed them for a good number of years now. After many years of writing daily on my blog, I transitioned into posting only photography, as I was doing a lot of traveling and experiencing bright and colorful new parts of the world that I’d never seen before, with beautiful and eccentric people who were beginning to shape my own growth. I still wrote occasionally, but only when I had words or opinions or stories that were clawing to get out, and even then, I had become intimidated by my own audience. The occasional censorship was unavoidable; I had become known for my photography at that point, not for my memoirs as it had been when I was younger and just trying to figure the world out. Granted, I was still trying to figure the world out, but to make that fact known implied weakness.
I always wrote; I was good at it, and it was a release. I was an unconventional kid who needed expression to live and breathe, and I expressed myself, most commonly when I shouldn’t have. I’ll tell you, not much has changed, except that now at age 30, I at least attempt to suppress my actual feelings instead of openly embracing the trouble they’ll inevitably get me in. Or at least, I HAVE suppressed them for a good number of years now. After many years of writing daily on my blog, I transitioned into posting only photography, as I was doing a lot of traveling and experiencing bright and colorful new parts of the world that I’d never seen before, with beautiful and eccentric people who were beginning to shape my own growth. I still wrote occasionally, but only when I had words or opinions or stories that were clawing to get out, and even then, I had become intimidated by my own audience. The occasional censorship was unavoidable; I had become known for my photography at that point, not for my memoirs as it had been when I was younger and just trying to figure the world out. Granted, I was still trying to figure the world out, but to make that fact known implied weakness.
Fast forward to present day...
Literally, because I am going to start right from the moment when I woke up, to the sounds of my young twenty-something roommate having sex with his new young twenty-something girlfriend on the other side of the wall. I’m no stranger to the sounds of roommates having sex; I lived in New Orleans for three years, a city filled with attractive, talented, and horny transients living in shotgun houses that don’t have walls between bedrooms. But what started my day off on the wrong foot was the giggling that followed to the bathroom after the moaning had stopped, and the sound of the shower starting in sync with my alarm, telling me it was time to get up and get ready for work. With a bed currently occupied with my warm and comfortable boyfriend, my bladder occupied with a night’s worth of pee, and the bathroom occupied by two giggling twenty-somethings, I instantly remembered how much writing about my fury for things used to, well… easy my fury for things.
On the drive to work, I became nostalgic about the years during which I used to write, which made me also nostalgic for photography, which in turn made me nostalgic for travel, which of course made me nostalgic for youth. I know deep down that the root of my rage for my twenty-something roommates and their fresh new love is envy. Granted, I am still considered young, but I have a career now that I can’t just skip away from nonchalantly like I could before. I have an amazing partner and lover, and while we are strong and incredibly happy together, are no longer in our honeymoon phase where it’s impossible to keep our hands off each other and our ugly-bits to themselves. And while I recently quit smoking, have started going to a gym, have stopped eating spaghetti for 80% of my meals, and am basically in better health than I’ve ever been in my life, I still look at those twenty-something bodies in complete and total envy that I can no longer shove a cheeseburger down my throat in three bites and continue my day (*cough* week *cough*) without stinging regret. I had vented with my own partner about how annoying it was to see their relationship plastered around every outlet of social media (and you better believe they both have every kind which they use at all hours of the day), and joked (I emphasize the word joked), that I had a conspiracy theory that they were only together because of how good it looked on the internet. I of course know that this is not true, because making such a joke was just a way to cope with my own envy and nostalgia while looking at beautiful pictures of them enjoying an impromptu trip to Puerto Rico together.
On the drive to work, I became nostalgic about the years during which I used to write, which made me also nostalgic for photography, which in turn made me nostalgic for travel, which of course made me nostalgic for youth. I know deep down that the root of my rage for my twenty-something roommates and their fresh new love is envy. Granted, I am still considered young, but I have a career now that I can’t just skip away from nonchalantly like I could before. I have an amazing partner and lover, and while we are strong and incredibly happy together, are no longer in our honeymoon phase where it’s impossible to keep our hands off each other and our ugly-bits to themselves. And while I recently quit smoking, have started going to a gym, have stopped eating spaghetti for 80% of my meals, and am basically in better health than I’ve ever been in my life, I still look at those twenty-something bodies in complete and total envy that I can no longer shove a cheeseburger down my throat in three bites and continue my day (*cough* week *cough*) without stinging regret. I had vented with my own partner about how annoying it was to see their relationship plastered around every outlet of social media (and you better believe they both have every kind which they use at all hours of the day), and joked (I emphasize the word joked), that I had a conspiracy theory that they were only together because of how good it looked on the internet. I of course know that this is not true, because making such a joke was just a way to cope with my own envy and nostalgia while looking at beautiful pictures of them enjoying an impromptu trip to Puerto Rico together.
See now I emphasize the word envy...
Because I'm trying to start coming to terms with getting older, and what that entails. It means I need to find comfort and solace, instead of despondency and defeat, in spending nights without obligation watching Netflix in bed with my partner and my dog. It means that I might have to work a little harder to get the body I'm used to having, or accept the way I look naturally and know I'm definitely still a babe. It means that I should be excited that even though we're not in the honeymoon phase anymore, my partner and I have made a relationship that has true companionship that will last a lifetime, and that he still makes me laugh until my sides hurt on a daily basis. It means that I should be grateful that I have a lovely house to come home to, and a great job to go to each day that challenges me, fulfills me, and will eventually hopefully have a big payout financially (such is the benefit of dealing with the growing pains of a successful startup). I'm not a flighty, transient, bohemian little butterfly anymore; one can only live that life for so long before they have to address the inevitability of adulthood. I'm there physically, and now I just have to get there mentally. I'm not 23 anymore, nor will I ever be again. The problem is not knowing whether if I stepped into the mindset of my 23-year-old self, would I envy my 30-year-old self the way 30-year-old me envies 23-year-old anybody? The grass is always greener...
Today I made a starting attempt at erasing envy by downloading a plugin that erased my entire newsfeed from Facebook. I spend so much time mindlessly scrolling through bullshit each day and either becoming grossly outraged by how incredible and unfathomably stupid or naive people are, stopping myself from challenging someone's self-righteousness, or, the big one, envying people who live different lives than myself, ones that are unattainable to me and are not worth my making unrealistic daydreams about. It's easy to use social media as a method of exaggeration; making your life look lovelier than it really is. I've been guilty of exercising that exaggeration and I've also fallen victim to it. I've decided to move away from that vapid world of regurgitated memes, sourceless and bias news articles, recreational offense, unwarranted and uneducated opinions, and Donal Trump's ass-face, and back into one where I can focus on the things in this world that make me tick, make me think, make me laugh and cry, and inspire me to say something.
Today I made a starting attempt at erasing envy by downloading a plugin that erased my entire newsfeed from Facebook. I spend so much time mindlessly scrolling through bullshit each day and either becoming grossly outraged by how incredible and unfathomably stupid or naive people are, stopping myself from challenging someone's self-righteousness, or, the big one, envying people who live different lives than myself, ones that are unattainable to me and are not worth my making unrealistic daydreams about. It's easy to use social media as a method of exaggeration; making your life look lovelier than it really is. I've been guilty of exercising that exaggeration and I've also fallen victim to it. I've decided to move away from that vapid world of regurgitated memes, sourceless and bias news articles, recreational offense, unwarranted and uneducated opinions, and Donal Trump's ass-face, and back into one where I can focus on the things in this world that make me tick, make me think, make me laugh and cry, and inspire me to say something.