Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Why You Should Stop Reading Blogs

 


      How many times have we all heard the old adage "Comparison is the thief of joy"?  Yet, here we are. On the internet. Reading blogs, scanning Pinterest, joining facebook groups. We look for ways to make things better, to improve. We read about a nice lady who just creates these effortlessly (to us) beautiful murals, or pieces of furniture, or has DIY ideas and execution beyond what we had imagined. Yet, she's just like us! Simple, sweet, down to earth. She's not high on her own power. We can be just. like. her. Right?

     Wrong. 

     I mean,  maybe we can sew and staple and paint and caulk and clean and plant and teach and do all the things she has done. Maybe. But so what? Because in a minute we are going on to the next blog and the next amazingly talented lady. We want to be just like her, too. Maybe not exactly. Maybe she has a nose ring and we would never. Or maybe she has no nose ring and we would never, ever remove our nose ring! But we want to be the exact same perfect amount of clever and creative and amazing. Then, what do we do? 

     We hop right over to the next blog and the next woman we want to be just like. 

     The thing is, friends, none of the amazing women we admire are all of this. Yet we expect ourselves to be all of it. We just want to be calm and soothing with the vision and eye and talent of Marion, with the DIY expertise of Sarah and we want to build a duplex and our own furniture with a Kreg Jig like Ana and take photos and tell stories just like Tamara and be well-rounded and loving and have a heart like Ilene. Plus, we want to bake/garden/have a talk show like Martha (except we'll do it even better!) and we're going to be cowgirls who homeschool while shooting amateur photography and cooking for our television show while rejuvenating an old abandoned building to turn it into God-knows-what with a deli like Ree.(whew!) And of course we'll do it while scouring craigslist for Portals to Downton Abbey while being as witty, down-to-earth, and stunningly graceful as Victoria. Right? Right?

     (None of these women are all of these things.)

     I haven't even mentioned how we're going to do it all in our pristine mansions while eating a healthy diet, exercising a lot without ever putting strain on our perfect bodies, smelling great and having the perfect hair teeth and skin. And guess what else!?!?

     WE. ARE. GOING. TO. BLOG. ABOUT. IT!

     On our professional looking blog we coded ourselves. 

     How insane is this? 

     Lucky for me, I'm not anywhere close to perfect. You don't have to stop reading my blog for fear of comparing yourself to me. But old me? Me in my twenties? Me in my twenties thought all I needed was a nice house and a new car and this many dollars and guess what? My life would be perfect and I would never feel stress again!

     We keep telling ourselves lies we don't even realize are lies. 

   Parts of our house are always a mess. Because we are us and we have five children and two dogs and we are enjoying ourselves and enjoying each other. Our priorities are: Watching Downton Abbey, napping, healthy debate, and doing dishes. In that order. If we don't do the dishes now, they will still be there in the morning and so what? 

     Every project I start gets anywhere from 2% to 90% complete and then, eh, I'm done. I have lots of these ideas so great you just could not begin to believe... and I don't always get them to look anything like I had envisioned. I can't cut triangles. How many points will all of this deduct from my final score?

     At the end of my life will I wish I had caulked just one more window? Will I long to scour the shower? I'm not saying we should stop growing or striving to be better versions of ourselves. I'm merely suggesting we remind ourselves who we are. We can't be all the things. 

     I challenge you today to be yourself. Whoever that may be. Let me know how it goes! 

10 comments:

  1. I still give you -100000 points for dropping a whole jar of Milk paint.. I haven't forgotten about that..
    I like this moniker.. "Just Be."

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  2. Not perfect here, either! And when I post my pics on my blog, you can usually tell there is clutter in the background... No photo shopping it out here! :)

    Stopping in from BYB

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  3. Well for as many people who wish they could tell stories and take photos like me, there are like three people out there that I wish I could be more like!
    So you are RIGHT.

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  4. Great post! One of the things I decided when I started blogging was to make sure I was just be honest, I think people enjoy reading real instead of fake. No one has the perfect life, and I don't like blogs that the person appears to be a little to perfect, because then it just makes me wonder if anything I just read from them was real.
    This is a great and honest post, I hope a lot of bloggers see it!!!!

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  5. Very cool post, but now I'm afraid this has just caused me to add you onto the list of amazing bloggers I need to emulate! lol And on and on it goes!

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  6. It's almost as if a warning should come with reading blogs - that you need to be well grounded to enter this world because otherwise, you will indeed fall into the comparison trap. And I love that you love my heart. And those nose rings? Not for everyone. xo

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  7. You're right - too much blog reading tends to make me feel rather sub-par. Everyone has to learn to take blogs with a grain of salt. :-) I am pretty honest on mine; I don't try to make everything look perfect because it's just not! I've seen lots of bloggers make posts about how everything is not always shiny and happy, and I do appreciate that. I've learned a lot from reading blogs, appreciate all the great ideas, and have learned what is likely to get done at my house (simple and quick) and what's not (complicated or involving glitter). Thanks for your post - what a wonderful reminder! #BB100

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  8. You're so right! When I go on people's blogs I've notice that a lot of them are all the same. That's why I like being myself and do what I enjoy. I don't care what people think. That's the reason why I've been blogging for several years.

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  9. Agreed: I'll be me,you be you : ) When I start questioning myself,I know it's time to take step back & slow down!
    {catching up on byb comments!}

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  10. Absolutely, I have thought about comparison alot lately, always feeling like I am 'not enough' because I can't do it all. My house is often a mess and my built in excuse is that I have xyz project going on. There are even times that I have to stay off of pinterest because it once again makes me question why I can't do it all! I am going with James and Megan....'just be'!

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