I’ve tried the blogging thing a few times. I don’t know why it didn’t quite work out for me.
I resented the social media time that seemed necessary and really didn’t have any quality content to share with the world. It was a fiasco. I believe I tried to use my blog as a way to make myself important in a time when I struggled deeply with self-esteem and who I am.
I went back and read some writing from my second blog (Honestly, my first blog was on Weebly and I have no idea where it is) and some of it is so unnecessary.
Clickbaity.
Cringe-worthy.
Terrible.
Writing that was silly and inauthentic and just redundant. But then some of it was… heartbreaking. I could feel the sadness and frustration with my life in Okinawa while I was writing that blog. Okinawa was such a difficult time for me.
Early marriage, move across the world, birth control depression, lack of self-esteem and worthiness, feeling dependant on my husband, and a true lack of purpose in the world made me a rather toxic and sad person. No wonder I struggled with making friends so badly. Sometimes I’m not sure if I would go through my experiences in Okinawa again. I’m not sure if they made me the person I am today or if they kept me from being more advanced than I am. If I’m being honest with myself, it’s probably a combination of the two.
Reading my words from three years ago makes me realize how far I’ve come. How much more confident I am in who I am as a person and what my purpose in life is. How much better I’ve adjusted to this military base than the last. I have isolated myself to a certain extent but it no longer hurts me.
I feel like I have grown so much in the past few years and reading my words made me realize what a culminating practice becoming yourself is. It is so fascinating to me how I can be a different person this week than last week because of a struggle I have overcome or just something I have learned that has changed my perspective. Because my perspective on life, religion, education, marriage, politics, everything has changed over the last few years. I have truly grown into myself. And yet… if these last few years have been so formative for me, what will the next few be like? Will my writing feel naive and dated if I read it back in a few years? That is what scares me about blogging or even journaling. I feel like I’m always ashamed when I read it later.
Ashamed of the authentic feelings that lead me to write them out and perhaps share them on the internet.
But should I be ashamed of being a different person than I was when I wrote something years ago? It shows that I’m growing and learning and becoming more me every day and year.
This has probably been one of my most successful years in quite some time. I’m doing well in my classes and am getting closer and closer to being in the classroom. I’ve been killing my reading goal and learning to find different perspectives than my own. And I’ve managed to form a relatively healthy relationship with exercise and my body is improving (slowly).
And yet, I still find fault with myself. I still struggle with not being good enough or not improving quickly enough.
Maybe I should take some time to appreciate how far I’ve come and how much better my life has been in the past year. Sometimes it is so sad to me how much time I spent being unhappy in such a beautiful and wondrous environment. I’ll never know if I just wasn’t in the right place at the time or if the chaotic and crowded environment of Japan doesn’t meet my needs. I wish I had the ability to know which and yet, once again, I have to think it was a little bit of both.
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