Well, how about that? It’s Valentine’s Day!! Also known as Galentine’s Day (my personal favorite…“hos before bros, uteruses before dude-erusus, ovaries before brovaries!!”), or Singles Awareness Day… Whatever you want to call it.
Seriously, how is it mid-February already?… This year went SO fast. I honestly have no recollection of what I did last year for Valentine’s Day. According to my TimeHop app (which syncs to all of your social media accounts so that on any given day, you can reflect on what you did that day a year ago, two years ago, etc…), here is my exciting Valentine’s Day history:
2014: “No activities found”
2013: According to Facebook, I went to the zombie love movie Warm Bodies with a girl friend. Aww, zombies are so cute!
2012: “No activities found”
2011: I mysteriously posted “<3” on Facebook. Whatever the eff that means. Actually, (lightbulb!) I believe that year around Valentine’s Day, I had just gotten back with an ex-boyfriend, which only lasted a couple months… clearly I just wanted some free chocolates. 😉
Despite my not-so-exciting past V-day social media postings, I will say, 2015 feels different. After the recent changes I’ve made to my overall attitude (a.k.a. realizing I don’t have to do what everyone else is doing or expecting), I can truly say this is the happiest I’ve been with myself for as long as I can remember. Therefore, my Facebook post this year includes the following image/quote, which I loved:
On the subject of loving one’s self, here are some of my thoughts on this lovely 14th day of February…
I think people put WAY too much pressure on themselves to be perfect. Especially once you enter your mid-twenties, the perceived “life” pressures suddenly feel intense, and get worse every year for a lot of us. I definitely felt that way, up until my recent “Not-Giving-A-F@$#” epiphany (see blog post #1 for details).
Some of the pressures include: finding a boyfriend or girlfriend (and man, can that pressure become a reality to many of us who are single on Valentine’s Day!), marrying someone, having a wedding, starting a family, having The Perfect Family, making money, getting that promotion, finding the job/career you love, buying a house, looking your best, feeling your best, being perfect in every single way.
I think social media is one HUGE reason people are always comparing themselves to others. It feels like pictures of happy couples, pictures of new babies and/or houses, and statuses about exciting job changes and promotions are constantly shoved in your face.
Why? Because people can be who they want to be on social media. Because most of the time, people only post when GOOD things happen, and not when BAD things happen. Who would honestly post “Got fired today because of poor work performance… Shit, I have terrible work ethic!” or “Just got dumped by my girlfriend because I am a cheater, so mad I got caught!” or something like that? No one!! Because NO ONE wants to make themselves look bad. People post things they are excited about, not embarrassed by. It’s science.
In social media, everyone has the ability to “frame” their life however they want — sometimes by exaggerating, and sometimes by completely lying (uh, have you SEEN Catfish??)
I will use myself as an example. (Yeah, shit’s about to get personal.) Before I first moved to Minneapolis, I had a serious boyfriend in Milwaukee. We had a good relationship when I lived there and things were convenient, but moving 6 hours away threw us the “Is our relationship supposed to survive through this?” test, and the answer was “No.”
I could feel it falling apart. So what did I do? For the first time in our 1.5 year relationship, I felt the need to become “Facebook official” with him so that the world (and I) could see our relationship status, publicly. I also proceeded to post cute pictures, statuses, etc. about our happy relationship. During the two months of our struggling long-distance relationship, the more I felt like it wasn’t going to work, the more I posted about how happy we were. Looking back, I believe that I honestly thought acting happier on social media would make me happier in real life, and maybe help save our relationship.
Well, that strategy didn’t work, and we gracefully ended things after facing reality that we weren’t meant to be together. So after not even two months of being Facebook official, I had to Google how to discretely end a relationship on Facebook to try and avoid any unwanted social media attention.
I am NOT saying that everyone who seems happy on social media isn’t actually happy (I am guilty of being happy on social media lately, and it has been 100% genuine).
…I am saying THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A PERFECT LIFE. My advice is to STOP comparing yourselves to others, because you have NO idea what their true reality is. And, just because everyone around you is going through certain big life events (getting married, having kids), it does NOT mean that those events are right for you yet. On a serious note, I just read an article about a girl who committed suicide because she was about to be 30 and wasn’t married yet. It is SO unbelievably sad that anyone would put that much pressure on themselves, and be that dependent on someone else for their own happiness. I understand wanting a family when the time is right, but that will never happen in the way you want it to until you are happy with yourself. Clearly, that girl was not happy with herself and instead of taking positive steps to change her situation, she took the saddest, worst possible way out.
Don’t settle for something you don’t deserve, or aren’t happy with, or are not ready for, just because you think it’s what you’re supposed to do at that time in your life. That goes for jobs, relationships, and big life events like marriage/kids/etc… Just remember, happiness is a CHOICE ❤
In summary… No matter what your relationship status is this Valentine’s Day, I just hope you are happy with, and love YOU for YOU!!
Oh yeah, and relating back to the title of this… I heard the song Do Your Thing today on The Current (which I’ve grown to love, living in MN)… Seems like a great V-Day song to end with 😉 Enjoy!
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