Warning, this is a personal post so you won’t see any travel recommendation or beautiful photography here.
I keep on promising that I will be back to religiously blogging but I keep breaking it and somehow feeling guilty because I keep doing it and not changing the circle of life (it’s a sarcasm btw). Some of you may know that I’m a full time employee now. I don’t want to use it as an excuse, because I believe in, “if it’s truly matter to you, you will do it and make time for it”. But I’m at a certain point where if I make time for it (blogging), I will become mad for sure because my work is already drain most of my energy (plus, I have a super clingy dog). So yes, I will put a lot of excuses for not blogging. I thought I’m good at multitasking, but I have a capacity in multitasking, whereas right now it is occupied by my work, dog, social life and education. I think I starting to get the gist of ‘life’, is it about balancing everything and try not to be crazy? (yes, I’m asking you).
As an individual who grew up with social media, I love and grow up with Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc, and now I’m avoiding each of them because I’m scared that I will be too absorbed by it and missing what’s real right in front of me, my own life. I only do #latepost in my Instagram now. I don’t even say “Happy Birthday” to my friends on Facebook because I didn’t turn on the notification. So I guess it’s more like FOMO (fear of missing out) the things that I “supposedly” not to missed, such as updates about my friends life (that I sometimes never talk to anymore, barely know why we’re following each other on social media, or like my friends’ biggest moments in life and now I’m considered rude because I don’t know their current updates), updates about what’s trending (mostly travel destination, but since I know myself more nowadays, I don’t need to know “what’s trending” because what’s trending doesn’t necessarily fit me, hence those trends don’t really matter to me anymore); and creativity (sometimes I’m scared that my “creativity” seems outdated and doesn’t attract others for them to “like” my posts because I’m not up to date, or something like that).
I keep asking myself again and again for the past couple of months. Michelle, if you love blogging, traveling, and photography, you will not think of it as a burden, so why are you so? Why you need other people’s validation that you have great artwork? Why am I such an attention seeker (in term of creativity)? Why I travel just to create a blog post or to post pictures on Instagram? I didn’t even got paid for doing any of those! Those were some of the questions that popping up on my mind while I’m MIA.
And the reason why I’m not MIA anymore, is because I’m able to answer all the questions I asked myself. I think it’s a burden because it is a burden. I’m still a human and I’m an emotional human-being (blame my pisces moon y’all). I am allowed to feel any kind of emotions, and feeling burdened/pressured is one of them. It is a great thing that I’m still able to listen to my emotion and act on it. I need other people’s validation (such as praise, reward, etc) because that’s the kind of artist I am. I need people’s validation because I want to know their opinion about my art and how they see it. But I know that “like” or “view” are not the only validation I need and I don’t have to depends on validations to improve my artworks. It is one of the ways to improve but certainly not the only way and certainly not the most important (at least for me). I travel to create because that’s how I express my creativity. Some people do it with brushes and canvas, or with Adobe and mouse, I’m doing it with my camera, eyes, feet, hands, and my whole body actually (because I cannot travel with just my eyes, feet and hands lol). I didn’t get paid for my art because it wasn’t the intention at first. The initial intention was to create and share it. Would love to turn it into my real, main job but it can wait and if it meant to be my path, it will be (because maktub).
Basically, human will never be satisfied with what they have, just like how I’m not satisfied with how I express myself through blog and photography. So from now on, I will not focus on what I have or what I want, but more into how can grow and how can I learn more.
Thank you for reading my rambling and hope to see you again on my next post. I’m posting it just before the month of August end (literally, it is 31 minutes till September), because it is my birthday month and I August will always be my month, my summertime. Btw have you listen to Lana Del Rey new album? I didn’t know what to title this post but then Lana Del Rey popped up in my mind.
Photo taken in Kamogawa River, Kyoto, Spring 2019.
No Comments