Becoming real
vivatregina:
It’s been well over a year since I last worked a 9 to 5 (or in my case, a 10 to 8), and something I promised myself then, upon leaving that job, was that I’d write more. I know that blogging is a dying social media form, that attention spans are short, and that a good number of the people who are still blogging on a regular schedule are likely mostly still doing it because it has become their livelihood — definitely not the case for me. But at the time, I missed writing for myself. It’s hard to do that when you go home exhausted every day from writing about the same drivel (fabulous drivel though it may be). When you write for a living, you’re not left with much energy to write for you.
I don’t have that excuse anymore. I haven’t had that excuse in a long time. But I find that, as much as I want to resurrect this space somehow, as much as I’d like to write stuff that I’m not getting paid for, just for the joy of stringing words together, I don’t really want to write about my life anymore. And it’s not for lack of stories, because there are stories. There have been many. It feels like there have been more stories in the last several months than maybe the last several years. There are so many people who have come in and out of my life over the course of a year and change (a fascinating revolving cast of characters), so many conversations, so many firsts, so many risks, so many mistakes, so many adventures — the stuff I always wanted to do that I’m finally getting to do, and even more than that besides.
I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed my life as much as I’m enjoying it now.
And I find that I don’t really want to tell anyone else about it who wasn’t already there to enjoy it with me. And that’s a first for me.
I think I may have given too much of myself to the Internet, to strangers, since I first started blogging at the age of 13. I think — I know — it was because I was so sheltered, and so lonely, and I didn’t know if anyone I knew would listen, so I tried my chances with people I didn’t know. And they — you — did. And the Internet has been a marvelous thing. Sure, we’ve had our hiccups here and there. I found myself in online trouble more times than I would have preferred; my penchant for oversharing was almost always what got me there. But my time online has more often than not been a positive thing, and for a long time, it was the most real thing in the whole world to me.
But lately, I’ve begun to find that it isn’t anymore. And I love that. I love that. I love that my real life is more real, that I don’t have to escape into the Internet to feel like I exist, to feel like there’s someone out there who gives a shit, to feel like there’s a space somewhere — however small, however virtual — for me. Because I’ve found my space in the real world.
I love that I feel comfortable enough with the friends I have to tell them my stories instead of writing them down and sending them out into cyberspace for everyone and no one to read. I love that we’re comfortable enough to talk about the hard things — feelings, hopes, hurts — along with the frivolities and inanities, and that we have come to know each other well enough to run the gamut of conversational topics and differing opinions and offensive statements without it changing our dynamic, without fear of being misunderstood.
It’s different. It’s better.
That doesn’t mean that I’m not going to write here anymore, or on my other social media accounts. As if I could ever give up the Internet! It’s just that reality takes precedence now, and that I have finally learned that online attention is little more than a short-lived illusion, and that there are some things I don’t need to share because I don’t owe them to anybody, because they’re just mine, and that’s okay.