The millennial generation gets a lot of flack for being self-involved and overly dramatic and lazy. Again, I blame Twitter. 140 characters makes broadcasting the drama of your existence to throngs of followers easy. Don't get me wrong -- I love Twitter. It's my social media of choice. Validating my narcissism in only 140 characters and I don't even have to leave my bed? Yes please. I am, evidently, the poster child of the millennial generation. Please love me.
But here's the deal, on Twitter, there's a tendency, as with all social media (and this is something I incessantly blog about (here & here), apparently) to make your life look beautiful and great, and even when there are those horribly sad and dramatic tweets, they're this tactic of being like, "My life is complicated and interesting just like I am a complicated and interesting human being." But blogs are a whole 'nother story.
Right as I thought blogs were dying once and for all, they started to come back. Everyone's on Tumblr or Blogspot or Wordpress, and you can usually find the link to their personal blog in their Twitter bio. Blogs are back, and they're here to stay. I swear to you, every single day I see someone new tweet something about "I got a blog!!! Go follow it and see the adventures of my life!" But here's where things sort of go awry: These blogs seem to be less life-glorifying and more real-live honesty. I know it's true for me, at least. I would like you people to look at my Instagram and be like, "Ah, she's so pretty and chic and fearless," or go through my Twitter and go, "Ah, she's so clever and cool and wise," and I make sure that the only things you see there are things that wouldn't ever make you think anything differently, but here? On the blog? Shiz gets real. I'm scared of the dark. I feel lonely and lost a lot. I don't do my hair. I wear sweats.
You people all have these blogs where instead of trying to be funny or look pretty or sound cool, you're sitting down and writing honestly about what it feels like to get your heart broken for the first time and what it feels like to graduate from high school or what it means to fall in love or how you feel about your best friends or why you're being angsty this week. It's amazing. Blogs, somehow, produce an honesty that I can't find anywhere else in the cyberworld. I mean, sure, we all still life-glorify and vie for attention, but blogs are different. They're special, and somewhere in between your pictures of your wedding and your vague, dramatic post about who-knows-what, two amazing things have happened:
1.) You have discovered that your feelings are valid, and
2.) I have started to genuinely care about your feelings, because I feel the same feelings.
And that's what I love about blogs. All of this crap the millennials get is, sure, in some way valid, but also it's kind of amazing. Suddenly, we have this generation who is going, "My feelings are valid! My sadness is allowed! My joy should be celebrated!" and then I read your blog and go, "Hey, my feelings are valid, too! My sadness is allowed, too! My joy should also be celebrated!" We're this amazing generation that really loves itself and then blogs give us this incredible outlet to broadcast that love, that validity and people read them and feel less alone because they feel those things, too.
Alan Cohen, who's the guy behind those Chicken Soup for the Soul books, said, "Wouldn't it be powerful if you fell in love with yourself so deeply that you would do just about anything if you knew it would make you happy? This is precisely how much life loves you and wants you to nurture yourself. The deeper you love yourself, the more the universe will affirm your worth. You can enjoy a lifelong love affair that brings you the richest fulfillment from the inside out." And he's totally right. Loving yourself, feeling that you are this valid, wonderful being is the number one way to be fulfilled and blogs are this cool, weird, wonderful step in that direction!
So, no: I don't think you're all amazing writers, no offense. And I don't expect all of you to think I'm an amazing writer, either (even though I'd like you to think I am because again, I'm the millennial generation poster child and also because I'd like to make a living doing this (please buy my book someday)). But the point is, I LOVE YOUR MELODRAMATIC BLOGS. I LOVE YOUR OUTFIT OF THE DAY BLOGS. I LOVE YOUR LIFE ADVENTURES BLOGS. They matter to me so much. Your feelings are valid and I'm just so obsessed with all of you for discovering that because I think it's just a healthy and generally awesome thing to discover.
So keep bloggin', babes. You're all the coolest.
"I like the feeling of words doing as they want to do and as they have to do." -Gertrude Stein
XOXOXO x infinity,
Addy
