Even If It's Imperfect


I started this blog when I was seventeen. I thought of it as a way to share my thoughts about different things in a way that was more developed and thought out than a tweet or an Instagram caption. I wasn't sure if anyone would be interested in what I had to say, but I knew I wanted to write. I wanted to express myself in some way, and this felt like a good option.

From the beginning, my posting has been somewhat irregular. I wrote with some frequency during my junior and senior years of high school, and then took a hiatus for a two-year period while I lived in Mexico. When I returned home, I intended to come back to the blog and write on a regular schedule. I still felt interested in having this creative outlet, and I was excited to post on the blog again.

But my activity on the blog has been much more limited than I would have liked it to be since that time. There were, of course, global and personal events that got in the way. Starting college -- and then moving home after less than three months due to the COVID-19 pandemic -- was a time where writing would have been incredibly appropriate and therapeutic, but I felt too distracted by the things going on around me. Several aspects of my college experience became reasons (or excuses) why I didn't post on the blog much, like social events and class responsibilities. I wrote a lot for my classes, and sometimes writing for myself and writing for my classes were too closely associated in my head. So I took whatever chance I could to take a break from one as to not exhaust my abilities on the other. From my catalog of blog posts over the past four years, I'm sure you can guess which kind of writing took the back seat.

Sometimes, the things I did instead of writing on the blog were things I wanted to prioritize, like school or family or friends. But sometimes they were things I didn't want to prioritize, they were just things. Like I wish I had spent the same amount of time writing as I did watching TV shows or scrolling endlessly through various social media feeds over the past few years, but I didn't. That's something I'll have to live with, but it's something I'm trying to change so I don't look back with as much disappointment as I do now.

There were, of course, other hinderances. One was the fact that I lost the youthful desire to write just for the sake of writing -- to write regardless of whether my words reached anyone. I worried that if my writing wasn't good enough for anyone to read, then it must not be good enough for me to write. But of course that's not true; I write to sharpen my writing skills, to develop my ideas about different topics, and to create an archive to reflect on and remember who I used to be. I'm not the same person I was when I started this blog, but it's meaningful to me to get a glimpse into the mind of my past selves through the words I've set here for safekeeping.

Probably the main reasons I haven't posted anything on the blog in so long is because I am always in search of something I'll never find. I constantly want to share a post that's perfect and polished. I don't want to share something half-finished or not well thought out. I think that's a reasonable ideal to strive toward, but it creates a barrier for me because my spurts of motivation frequently don't last long enough to allow me to create a finished product that I feel is worth sharing. It's not that I haven't written anything in the last three years, it's that I haven't felt that anything is finished enough to share.

Over the past few years, each time I tell people that I have a blog, I follow up with the caveat that I haven't posted much lately. As time has gone on, it feels less and less genuine to mention the blog in the present tense. Can you say that you do something if you haven't done that thing in years? I don't know.

But this post today is a reminder to myself that I want this blog to live, and to help me find the innocence that I had when I started it all those years ago. It's a testament to the fact that creating something worthwhile doesn't mean it's flawless -- and that's okay. And it's my way to bring my blog to the present; it's something that I do, not something that I used to do.

I don't know who will read these words, and I don't know what the future of this blog looks like. But I know that this is something that I want to do, and I'm glad you're here with me.

Until next time,

Giancarlo

This photo isn't a very recent one of me -- in fact, it's about a week shy of two years old. But I like it, and that's a rarity, so it's here.

Popular posts from this blog

I'm Not Trying to be a Bad Friend

Image
Disclaimer: I know that lots of the thoughts in this post are somewhat illogical. As someone who considers myself to be fairly grounded in most regards, it feels foreign to me to admit that I have thoughts and feelings that, upon inspection, don't always make sense. But I know what I feel, and even if it's stupid, I want to share it. I imagine that everyone has things that they don't love about themselves. For some people, it might be their weight or their bad habits or their poor decision making. It might be something they can control, like their haircut. Or it might be something they don't have as much control over, like their financial situation. I would be shocked if there is anyone who can't find some flaw in themselves that causes some level of discomfort or frustration. This might look like different things to different people. Some people might ignore certain shortcomings or flaws because they're focused on one specific thing. For others, they might be p...
Read more

Opening the Blinds

Image
I don’t think I have ever defined myself as an extrovert. There have been times in my life where I have done extroverted things, like the multiple times I went to schools where I didn’t know basically anyone but forced myself to talk to people so I could make friends. There have been parts of my life where socializing has come easily and smoothly. Lately, there have been lots of times where interacting with other people—especially people I don’t know (or don’t know very well)—feels exhausting. Sometimes, I just want to do my own thing. I’ve written before about my distaste for small talk , which stems from both personal insecurities and the reality that small talk is genuinely not energizing to me, though I do recognize it as a necessary building block to cultivate relationships with new people. The hard part is that I really like people. I love getting to know new people and being able to hear their stories and perspectives and jokes and learn about everything that has made them...
Read more

Give Thanks

Image
I've never been one for internet challenges. Well, I guess not "never." In 2014, I shared a video of me participating in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge in what's now an archived post on my Instagram. Remember when everyone was dumping cold water on themselves and posting it? Simpler times. Since then, though, I'm not really into internet challenges. I use social media constantly, and I see lot of people sharing posts because other people have started a hashtag and they want (or feel obligated) to join in. I don't judge those people, because I think that one of the positives of social media is that there aren't a lot of rules; you create and share what you feel is right, based on your own motivations. I don't see a point in belittling people who participate in those challenges because I don't see a point in judging what makes other people happy. I just don't really take part, because that's not my style. Last week, a new internet challenge sta...
Read more