So, this is happening // a blog post about the blog
After endless hours of the attempted acquisition of the Spanish language (apparently listening to Spanish music doesn’t equal fluency), the week is here, I’m going to Spain. I’m also in the phase in my recovery where I’m at one of the best places I’ve been in five years. And because I’m a creative (aka oversharer) by nature, I thought this would be the perfect time to start a new chapter with my writing. I wanted to create a place to write down all the travels, the inevitable absurdity that happens in day-to-day life. More than that though, I wanted to make a place where other people can see that going through things like mental health struggles, or random awkward situations - is just apart of life. Things to make people realize that we shouldn’t be embarrassed about things when you can laugh at it.
I’ve always had this space as my platform to share my writing, my thoughts, my awful jokes. But it’s time to expand on that. I thought this meant I had to come up with a new website, a new name, a new theme etc. I had a cringy list of ideas for titles going (‘a chill girl on Instagram’ was seriously pondered, as was various travelling puns), but in the end, I decided to start this new chapter where I started the last one, here, on the blog.
Why? Well, domains are expensive (true). But more importantly, I didn’t want my writing and creative work to live on a space where I was trying to put forward this picture-perfect identity; nicely curated Instagram feeds, perfect content schedule, consistent colour schemes and fonts etc. I want it to come from my life, what it actually looks like. In the next couple of months, I’ll be travelling, writing about it, and oversharing (as per usual) - all here. (And yes, this is a blog post about what’s next with the blog - it’s meta, keep up).
My writing has been very recovery-focused because my life was (and still is to some extent) very recovery-focused. But I’ve always wanted to write about all my life, all the funny stories and random thoughts I have, but I was terrified of what people would think of me. Even though I’ve been writing about mental health for years, this felt different. Now, if you’ve read a self-help book or have listened to the goop podcast you’ll know this - people’s reactions only affect you if you let them.
Writing about my recovery initially came from this thought; no one cares about you. I know what you’re thinking, “fuck, that’s dark, are you good?” but it’s the most freeing notion. Obviously, you have people that care about you, you have family and friends and the people you know that will always be behind you. And those are the people who will support whatever kind of work you put out, the ones that will be your cheerleaders no matter what path you go down.
The people that you’re scared of upsetting or scared that they’re going to judge you? They are too busy focusing on their own problems/lives to critique what you’re doing. No one is looking at what you’re wearing, or how you’re acting because they’re too worried about what other people are thinking about them. Humans are pretty selfish, look at climate change.
And yes, you may get some people who judge or critique you (a kind word for shit all over your work), but those are the people that are too bored in their own life so they start taking it out on you. Even if someone does critique you, you can let their opinion get you down, or you can flip your hair, put on Lizzo and sashay away into your greatness.
There’s a phrase that adequately describes the theme of this blog, a saying I use to end nine out of ten of my stories - “so, that happened.”
It starts like this - I’m talking about something that happened to me, the usual slightly award, over-sharing chat with friends (or my therapist). Some brief examples; something from my second stay in rehab, the Beyonce/K-Pop/Dance Hall class I just took (solo), the time I dropped out of University then went back and switched majors, the time I took boy advice from a man dressed as a cow, the time I caught fire trying to impress a man etc. The story varies but it ends with me saying, “so, that happened.”
I’ve used to use this phrase for years, mainly as a way to neutralize the absurdity of the situation. To trick people into thinking that yes, it was a completely normal thing to be working as a princess (wig included) at a holiday festival to make some extra money (and then accidentally describing cet job using the words ‘adult entertainer’ at my grandma’s Christmas party).
I may have had too much free time over the holidays to think, or maybe my attempted philosophy major crept-in but the more I thought about that phrase the more I thought - why am I trying to normalize my life. After going through the classic ups-and-downs of a twenty-something mixed with mental health issues I’ve come to realize this; no one is normal. Everyone is just pretending to be. And the more we pretend to be the more boring things are.
I don’t want my writing to normalize experiences, I want it to embrace all the sh*t that happens on a daily basis. That’s where the idea of “so, that happened” comes in - I got a coffee, so that happened. I pulled a neck muscle at an “It’s Britney Bitch” dance class from too many vigorous hair flips, so that happened.
So, this is happening; a new project on the same blog.
They’ll be a lot of writing and a little bit of photography about travels, attempting to live in the world as a “chill girl”, normalizing mental health struggles, and what happens as I navigate through my 20-something years.
Cheers!