Good morning/good night, whatever the hell. I've decided that I'm going to use this blog as a sort of diary (*ahem* refer to last blog post please thnxxxx) but I will give fair warning as to what is being included in said blog post by prefacing any diary-ish post title with "dear diary" because I think that's a good compromise. And if you don't like personal garbage then stop reading my blog but I know you do because you're on the internet and the internet is literally (figuratively) just a big fucking heap of personal information. Also, because this is a "diary" I'm going to be posting some pretty heartbreaking shit, but I don't want any sympathy/pity comments because I'm a bad ass bitch and in reality I'm okay, but I really appreciate the thought anyways <3
Where I'm at so far in 2015 is that I've been really let down by the one person I never thought would do that. Side note: I'm gonna stop doing that awkward, annoying cop-out thing I used to do where I would use second person and be like "you need to do this in your life because it's important for you etc." because I'm writing about myself and I'm just gonna leave you out of it. So, to stick with that new first person thing, what I've learned in the first six days of 2015 is that people are going to let me down so hard for my whole life and there's nothing I can do about it. They can make it seem like it's my fault, make it seem like I'm not "cool" enough to deserve better, but they're wrong. I've learned that if someone is going to let me down, it has nothing to do with me. If I'm going to let someone else down, then yes, that definitely has everything to do with me, but in this case it is totally not my bad (bolded and underlined to remind myself). When the initial "let down" first happened, I felt absolutely abandoned. There's still a part of my heart that does, and I don't think that will ever go away. But immediately after the fact, I had sooooooo many people expressing so much love for me that the abandonment I felt became very small and hidden beneath all the support and care that was piled on top of it. These people helped to remind me that I am a cool, exciting, nice, interesting person with lots to offer and that's what has been keeping my head above water. Also, I started a new job and making money is probably one of the best feelings I've ever known, so that keeps me distracted too. I hate that it took such a huge fucking punch to my heart for me to realize how amazing the other people in my life are, but I am glad that it opened my eyes. Like, exhibit A, my dad wrote me a letter about how he understands my anger (we have very similar temperaments) but that love is the most important thing and to always remember that. He said that the love he has for my sister, my mom, and I is all he really cares about. I'm tearing up just thinking about it now, he's so sweet. And that's just one person out of so many others I have by my side. So yeah, in conclusion I'm very, very angry at this situation in some aspects and I'm really trying to work through that and distract myself, but in others I just feel very lucky. I also feel very emotionally strong but I can't tell if that is just a lack of emotions maybe???? Who knows, whatever, I'm tough and I'll be fine.
In other news, I've come to the conclusion that I think vanity is totally cool. I've addressed the selfie issue before and I still stand by what I said. The selfie is a super feminist form of self-expression and I think it's beautiful that anyone can just take a picture of themselves whenever they feel like it and post it all over social media for everyone to see and those people have to look at this person exactly the way they want to be seen in that moment!!! Filters and all, it's so cool. Besides the selfie though, a person liking their own fucking face and doing things to make themselves look/feel better is so great and I think that it's wrong to make people feel selfish for spending a few hours on their hair, you know? So what, these people (me) want to spend a long ass time shaping their eyebrows?? There are so many worse things in the world than having a little extra mirror/one-on-one time so whatever! WHATEVER!!!!
That's all I have to say for right now. I'm trying to train myself to not have a filter when writing or speaking, so I'm sorry if this is all a little too forward. Going through the process of learning to be more honest is something that I need to do for my own personal growth so maybe just be happy you're able to see me get all weird with my honesty in public, k? Talk to you soon.
Wednesday 7 January 2015
Friday 2 January 2015
2015: the realness is real
Hey everyone! Happy 2015! Here's to hoping this next year is your best one yet. Obviously I've been a pretty inactive blogger for this past little while. I've been having some thoughts about what this blog allowed me to do and say and I'm thinking that it's important to make some changes in this coming year.
So much happened in 2014 that I wanted to write about. From the shootings on Parliament Hill to the appalling killings of unarmed black people by white police officers, there is soooo much ground to cover but I felt ill-equipped. Every time I wanted to write about something, even just a Facebook status, I had to check myself and think, you know, maybe it isn't necessarily my place to say anything. What if I say something offensive just because I'm trying to be involved and heard? Maybe it isn't my place to be involved and heard. I believe strongly in taking the side of social justice and being aware of what's going on, talking to everyone I know about what's going on and trying to find ways to make it better, but that's a personal discovery sort of thing. It's impossible to change the way things are by writing a Facebook post that says "Fuck the police, this is bullshit, rant rant rant". Anger can be helpful in terms of motivation to do better, but it's containing that anger and adjusting my own life and actions accordingly that can be the most helpful, I think. So basically what I'm trying to say is I spent a lot of time last year being angry about how unfair the world is for a lot of people and feeling like I couldn't say anything productive, which brings me to my next point.
I've realized a few things about this blog that piss me off and I'm about to point them out to you so you can go back and read previous posts and be just as annoyed as I am with myself. I feel that this blog has given me some good things but it's also been something that I've felt a little unsettled by. I haven't been writing a lot recently, not because I don't have anything to say, but because I feel like I need a more productive way to say them. I'm not writing this to be self-depricating or anything like that, I just kind of need people to understand where I'm coming from. When I look back on the beginning of this blog, I see all my posts about environmentalism and vegetarianism and all these things that were really important to me at the time (still are important to me too, for sure). But I've come to realize that the place I was coming from with those posts was more about an attitude of wanting to seem better than an attitude of genuine care for those issues. A lot of the posts that I wrote I felt legitimately passionate about, about 95% probably, but a lot of them were also coming from this place in my mind of wanting to always be smart and right. I kind of felt like I had to prove myself, like I had to show people that even though I'm not going to school right now or whatever I still had a brain and I was still capable of articulate thought. I was writing from a place of "well, I know this and now you know this because I'm telling you" instead of a more "well, here's something I learned let's talk about it" kind of attitude which I believe to be way more helpful and positive. I feel like it took me until now to realize that talking about being better doesn't actually make you better, and sometimes it can make you a huge judgemental asshole. When I was eighteen and stupid, I used to judge people for wearing make-up and nail polish and whatever because I knew "that wasn't natural and oh my god don't they know that's bad for them and blah blah blah etc". I always put my way of doing things above the way that others chose to do things and that's soooo shitty. I'd like to take a second and just apologize for being that way in my writing, for coming off as arrogant or insincere. And I'm not asking for a flood of comments being like "oh Jenelle you were never like that ho ho ho merry christmas lol" I'm saying I legitimately feel in my heart that I could've done better and my apology comes from that place, from my own feelings about myself. And I guess I never could have come to this conclusion if I hadn't gone through those phases of growing and learning, but that's just something I need to move on from and get better at.
So, here's what 2015 is looking like for me: I have a few really great friends, I'm really in love, I like having fake nails, I eat meat now, I'm trying to be as honest as possible, I have a great family, my room is messy, and I'm trying as hard as I can to approach everything as humbly as possible. I still care about social justice and politics and and feminism and things being fair and ethical and good, but I'm not gonna spend this year blogging about stuff like that just so people think I'm smart and/or involved. I know I'm smart, I also like to drink a lot, I spend way too much money on make-up and underwear, and I'm just trying to be better and I'm not going to apologize for any of that. I lost a few friends over this past year because I'm different now and I'm not going to apologize for that either. I'm changing and growing and learning to love myself, I'm not losing the aspects of myself that I liked but I am losing the ones that I didn't.
So ("so so so so", word of the day) in conclusion, here is what I'm trying to fucking say and it's taking so long but here we go, from now on this blog will be about me. Not about me trying to prove myself as smart with knowing all this shit about the world and politics and things that I wish I was (and am hoping to be) more educated on, but about my day to day life that I'm living and how everything affects me, because realistically, that's all I know anything about and me trying to write about anything other than that will inherently be less honest. I WANT this BLOG to be honest and real and relatable and fun and funny and exciting! I still want to write about feminism and feelings and all of that good stuff, but only in relation to my own experiences. I want to share my experiences with you because my life is the only thing I should pretend to know shit about.
I think this is definitely the most honest thing I've ever written. I just went back and read it and I was like "oh my goddddd am I actually saying this to my friends right now???" and the answer is yes, I am, because this year is about truth and being real and not holding back. I hope you still read and I promise (yes, I PROMISE) to write more often because now I feel way more comfortable about what I'm doing here. Thank you and you rule and you're probably so nice and I hope you have a great day.
So much happened in 2014 that I wanted to write about. From the shootings on Parliament Hill to the appalling killings of unarmed black people by white police officers, there is soooo much ground to cover but I felt ill-equipped. Every time I wanted to write about something, even just a Facebook status, I had to check myself and think, you know, maybe it isn't necessarily my place to say anything. What if I say something offensive just because I'm trying to be involved and heard? Maybe it isn't my place to be involved and heard. I believe strongly in taking the side of social justice and being aware of what's going on, talking to everyone I know about what's going on and trying to find ways to make it better, but that's a personal discovery sort of thing. It's impossible to change the way things are by writing a Facebook post that says "Fuck the police, this is bullshit, rant rant rant". Anger can be helpful in terms of motivation to do better, but it's containing that anger and adjusting my own life and actions accordingly that can be the most helpful, I think. So basically what I'm trying to say is I spent a lot of time last year being angry about how unfair the world is for a lot of people and feeling like I couldn't say anything productive, which brings me to my next point.
I've realized a few things about this blog that piss me off and I'm about to point them out to you so you can go back and read previous posts and be just as annoyed as I am with myself. I feel that this blog has given me some good things but it's also been something that I've felt a little unsettled by. I haven't been writing a lot recently, not because I don't have anything to say, but because I feel like I need a more productive way to say them. I'm not writing this to be self-depricating or anything like that, I just kind of need people to understand where I'm coming from. When I look back on the beginning of this blog, I see all my posts about environmentalism and vegetarianism and all these things that were really important to me at the time (still are important to me too, for sure). But I've come to realize that the place I was coming from with those posts was more about an attitude of wanting to seem better than an attitude of genuine care for those issues. A lot of the posts that I wrote I felt legitimately passionate about, about 95% probably, but a lot of them were also coming from this place in my mind of wanting to always be smart and right. I kind of felt like I had to prove myself, like I had to show people that even though I'm not going to school right now or whatever I still had a brain and I was still capable of articulate thought. I was writing from a place of "well, I know this and now you know this because I'm telling you" instead of a more "well, here's something I learned let's talk about it" kind of attitude which I believe to be way more helpful and positive. I feel like it took me until now to realize that talking about being better doesn't actually make you better, and sometimes it can make you a huge judgemental asshole. When I was eighteen and stupid, I used to judge people for wearing make-up and nail polish and whatever because I knew "that wasn't natural and oh my god don't they know that's bad for them and blah blah blah etc". I always put my way of doing things above the way that others chose to do things and that's soooo shitty. I'd like to take a second and just apologize for being that way in my writing, for coming off as arrogant or insincere. And I'm not asking for a flood of comments being like "oh Jenelle you were never like that ho ho ho merry christmas lol" I'm saying I legitimately feel in my heart that I could've done better and my apology comes from that place, from my own feelings about myself. And I guess I never could have come to this conclusion if I hadn't gone through those phases of growing and learning, but that's just something I need to move on from and get better at.
So, here's what 2015 is looking like for me: I have a few really great friends, I'm really in love, I like having fake nails, I eat meat now, I'm trying to be as honest as possible, I have a great family, my room is messy, and I'm trying as hard as I can to approach everything as humbly as possible. I still care about social justice and politics and and feminism and things being fair and ethical and good, but I'm not gonna spend this year blogging about stuff like that just so people think I'm smart and/or involved. I know I'm smart, I also like to drink a lot, I spend way too much money on make-up and underwear, and I'm just trying to be better and I'm not going to apologize for any of that. I lost a few friends over this past year because I'm different now and I'm not going to apologize for that either. I'm changing and growing and learning to love myself, I'm not losing the aspects of myself that I liked but I am losing the ones that I didn't.
So ("so so so so", word of the day) in conclusion, here is what I'm trying to fucking say and it's taking so long but here we go, from now on this blog will be about me. Not about me trying to prove myself as smart with knowing all this shit about the world and politics and things that I wish I was (and am hoping to be) more educated on, but about my day to day life that I'm living and how everything affects me, because realistically, that's all I know anything about and me trying to write about anything other than that will inherently be less honest. I WANT this BLOG to be honest and real and relatable and fun and funny and exciting! I still want to write about feminism and feelings and all of that good stuff, but only in relation to my own experiences. I want to share my experiences with you because my life is the only thing I should pretend to know shit about.
I think this is definitely the most honest thing I've ever written. I just went back and read it and I was like "oh my goddddd am I actually saying this to my friends right now???" and the answer is yes, I am, because this year is about truth and being real and not holding back. I hope you still read and I promise (yes, I PROMISE) to write more often because now I feel way more comfortable about what I'm doing here. Thank you and you rule and you're probably so nice and I hope you have a great day.
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