Hello 🙂

I’ve started writing this blog in my head so many times over the last few weeks; wondering what to say first, whether it felt right to say anything at all when I’ve not touched these pages for over a year. Which is strange (and admittedly a little dramatic), but writing a blog used to come so naturally to me. For the first years of my 20s, every week I’d sit down, negotiate my thoughts, and publish whatever I landed on for strangers to read. But when I moved to London and I started posting videos on social media, I was sharing so many parts of myself for public consumption that at some point I felt like I’d lost my emotional and intellectual privacy. Not to mention, it began to really grate on me when men in bars would assume they knew everything about me because they’d read a few blogs. And whilst I can’t guarantee that I’m any better at recognising when I’m sharing too much, or that some lads won’t get a little over familiar again, I’m a yapper and I always have something to say. So, onward!

In the time since my last entry, my peers and I have become truly obsessed with analysing ourselves and each other; unpacking every situation or emotion we have until everyone is blue in the face. We feel a type of way because social media is rotting our brain, or Mercury is in retrograde, or we’ve got past trauma from a billion failed situationships. And whilst my eyes narrow at the accuracy of whether Mercury’s movement impacts my life and mood, I don’t doubt the affects of social media or our abysmal dating culture at the moment on the way many of us are feeling. Still, I do occasionally wonder whether we’re making things worse for ourselves by trying to give everything we do or feel, a name or a reason. Especially when there have been so many times over the last year when my answer to most questions about my life and what I’m doing has been, I don’t really know…But because I’ve felt like I’m supposed to be able to explain why I’m feeling that way – am I depressed? Do I have trauma? Is it the Moon?! – sitting in the not knowing has been scarier than it should’ve been.

The more time I spend in different public spaces, whether it’s in a foreign country, a new city, or at a friend’s party surrounded by the people from their life and not mine, I hear so many young people tear themselves up about not having things figured out; comparing their own lives to the successes of others, as if we’re all supposed to be going the same way or doing the same thing. But then if we hear one of our friends doing this, it becomes so easy to rationalise everything and say ‘don’t do that to yourself, you’re doing so well, it’s okay to not know’. So where’s the disconnect? Why can we support each other, but still work ourselves up when we’re the one having the ‘what the hell am I doing with my life?’ breakdown?

Unfortunately, this won’t be the part of the blog where I provide you with a neat to-do list of how not to freak out about not knowing where your life is going, because I think doing that would be besides the point. The point is that there isn’t an end destination, and thus, there isn’t a guideline to follow to reach somewhere. Which can feel terrifyingly vague when you realise that, but at the same time, it does also relieve the pressure.

Saying this, I do still think a fair few of us would feel a whole lot better if we faced ourselves a bit more: not ignoring the things we think or feel just because we can’t find the right time (are too scared or lazy) to actively think something through. Not coasting through because we’re comfortable, we’re in a routine, but we’re not actually that happy. Call me crazy, but I just don’t think that being okay – even ‘pretty happy’ – with something, be it a job, a friendship, a relationship, is what we should be aiming for.

I’m not perfect, I think too much, I struggle when I’m not in control of a situation or my own feelings, and I have a tendency to be passive aggressive on occasion, but I want a lot for myself. I want huge loves – platonic, familial and romantic – I want a great career, I want to always feel challenged, interested, excited, and (I hate this last word because I’m Northern so it makes me cringe, but it probably is the correct word to use, so I’m going for it) inspired.

That wasn’t so bad, to be fair. *sigh in Northern relief*

All I’m saying, is that yes it’s fine to be confused or scared about what you want your life to look like, but not knowing shouldn’t equal settling for mediocre. We’re young, and if you ask any middle-aged woman in a pub smoking area after she’s had a couple of glasses of wine, she’d tell you that this is exactly the time when you should be taking risks. (Then she’d probably ask you if you’ve got a lighter). Go on the random holiday for the plot, give a different type of job or work a go, date people who make you feel excited and giddy. Do what my mum told me to do a few months ago when I cried down the phone to her about a man, and hold yourself more dearly, because if you don’t, nobody else will.