You're Writing It All Down Anyway

When I made the move to truelane from my first fashion blog zipped in 2015, I created this ‘Life’ section in anticipation of writing articles that would change the world. After all, one of my “sister lives,” as my friend Allison calls them, is being a renowned journalist—sharp as a number two pencil, quick as a fly-catching frog and as hard-hitting as they come. As much as I love to write, that isn’t my style, and since the world-changing articles weren’t coming to me I focused on my outfit posts and travel content and let life hang in the balance.

Fast-forwarding four years, while trying to brainstorm ways to stay creative and relevant in the Age of Influencers, I started to rethink my approach. What if the category of life included just that; life? Could I write little blurbs about things I’m thinking about or going through that don’t have to be groundbreaking? As soon as the thought popped into my head, I shook myself.

Of course everything I write doesn’t have to be groundbreaking.

The epiphany spoke to the pressure of being good enough—scratch that, ~*~*UNBELIEVABLY INCREDIBLE*~*~ enough—in 2019 to have anyone even turn their heads in your direction. My generation and I struggle with pressuring ourselves to become amazing in a short period of time; look at all the nineteen-year-olds out there who have built an empire or created a film or crafted gun control campaigns while I sit here unable to accomplish anything. It’s a classic and negative cycle of comparison, and it usually takes a whiskey and a phone call with my mother to start climbing out of it. If I’m not going to write something revolutionary, why hit ‘publish’ on anything at all?

I had to hammer it into my brain for weeks before sitting down to even write this post: not all of my writing is going to be great. If you want proof, just look at the first draft of my young adult novel I’ve taken an entire year to get halfway done. Does that stop me from writing it? No (okay, sometimes). Why should I let it stop me from writing anything else? One blog post is a microscopic commitment compared to a 60,000-word manuscript. The point of this blog page was to put myself out there; to flex a writing muscle or two and get over the fear of putting my words in front of others. It might have taken me four years to overcome that fear, but every day I realize a little more fully the importance of pushing yourself. Not everything has to matter. What matters is doing it at all.