The Ugly Truth

The pressure of being perfect and of doing everything in a perfect manner is becoming more and more absurd as well as unhealthy, don’t you think? I am not here complaining because I know that is a standard that I will never achieve. Perhaps, I cannot even be considered a worthy competitor, but for the first time in a while, I don’t even want to be.

I have to admit that over these few years I also hoped to achieve that level, build a blog that corresponds to the expected standards, but I feel like that only took away some of the pleasure I felt while writing these posts.

Needless to say, I never managed to build that great blog I hoped that I would build. Truth be told, I never really tried. It sounded good in theory, but there was always something holding me back. While on one hand I had limited time as I was doing my bachelor degree and then my masters, I did not try to spend all my available time working on making this big. I am not saying this so that I can excuse myself, so please do not take it like that. I just never felt comfortable showing the life or better yet, the image of a life I wish to live rather than the one I have [this is what I thought for a long while that I needed to be in order to grow my blog and business].

Glamour sounds amazing and it is something all of us strive for at some point in our lives. Growing up, I aways thought that I would have to be everything that we only associate with a lady and only that. Hope that made sense? It definitely did in my head. I thought that I would have to be perfect and have a huge amount of grace and that will help me navigate through life with ease. But who was I kidding. I will never have that amount of grace nor charm to pull that off. While I do like to believe I am well mannered and can pull off looking and behaving like a lady in real life, that is not all that I am. I am too opinionated and all too willing to fight for what I believe in with perhaps less grace than one would expect. Why am I telling you all this? Well, this also translates to my blog.

My design and my photos will never be perfectly feminine and not rough around the edges. Not only because I don’t have the skills to pull that off and I need to improve in that regard, but also due to the fact that it is simply not me. I said above that this blog no manner how much I tried could never show the image of the life I want to live, but that is not even the life I want to live. It is the life I thought I should want to live and that is not okay.

I have always been proud of my ability to fight and go on no matter what, but I have to admit that the pressure of being perfect did get to me as well. All the fake-ness of this industry and the competition for inflating one’s numbers is just too much. Don’t get me wrong yet again, I do not believe that being pulled in by this craziness made me weak. I believe that it is a phase all of us go through at some point in our lives; the ones that don’t are either lying or incredibly luckily to feel confident and accept who they are. Also, I do not believe that I should not be considered weak for not being to pull it off nor do I believe you are weak if you decided that it is something you  want or do not want to pursue.   To each their own or my new favourite saying – ‘you do you’.

The reason why I mentioned this above is because I feel that it is important to talk about these things. We need to tackle head on what is happening in the industry and accept that all of us are flawed to some extent or another and that this image of perfection that seems to sell will only harm in the long run. Life is messy and it will never be perfect, but that does not make it any less beautiful.

I could go on and on about this, but I think that I said all that I needed to say, at least for now. Maybe one last thing to add is what you should expect moving forward. The changes will not be as visible on your part really, the process behind me writing these posts will be different. I am trying to train myself to stop overthinking my decisions and accept myself for who I am rather than what others expect me to be. I am trying to embrace all the sides of myself and do what I used to excel at: ignore what others think of me and ignore all those pushes in one direction or another and just do what I feel is right for me and for my mental health. There are things more important in this life than pleasing everyone else and destroying the essence of who you are in the process.