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.
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