Reality check

Last week, a girl I went to high school with messaged me on Facebook expressing that she envied my life and wished she was me. She was constantly tired from taking care of her two children, fought with her husband, and was living paycheck to paycheck.

STOP: This post is not about to be a humblebrag “Oh my life is a fairytale.” It’s not. Far from it.

This girl is one that I haven’t talked to since high school and, even then, it was just “hi” every now and then. I think when you first discover Facebook, you friend every person you’ve ever come into contact with, because let’s be real–no one has 1,759 “friends”.

I was kind of taken aback by what she had typed and I was met with mixed emotions. I felt awful that she was in a position in which she felt like she couldn’t talk to a closer friend and was reaching out to someone she rarely spoke to, but it was also a little bit of a reality check. One that I needed, too.

I think sometimes we are so busy looking at things we wished we had, think we need, or wished we could do that we don’t stop to appreciate the things in our lives that we already have. We spend more time wishing, hoping, and dreaming than actually appreciating and enjoying.

I’m the first one to say that my life isn’t perfect. It’s not a fairytale and I still put my pants on one leg at a time, just like everyone else. That’s not to say I don’t have my proud moments and ones where I feel like things ARE perfect, but there are certainly days where I even curse getting up, because not one thing is going right. I think we all do. No?

This brings me to my point. I know, I know, I’m long-winded. It’s a gift. Sort of.

It’s easy in a [blog] world to make things seem better than they really are. “To shine a turd” as my grandmother likes to say. But are those the kind of people you really want to read about–you know, the ones who have a unicorn bring them their coffee in the morning?

I know I’m guilty of trying to document things at all times, edit my photos, upload them to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. When did we get so busy trying to live that we forgot how to actually live? When did documenting my lunch become more important than enjoying it with the person I was with? It didn’t–and it never will be.

This social world has given all of us the opportunity to live perfectly “filtered” lives, where right-to-know is a way of life and you have the power to determine whether you had a salad for lunch or a warm spinach salad with pancetta tossed in olive oil and sprinkled with parmigiano-reggiano.

For me, sometimes the salad is good enough–other days I’ll take the warm spinach. Am I going to stop altogether? Probably not. But now is as good a time as any to slow down and enjoy life–without worrying about whether I’ll have something good to post on Instagram later.