#35: Blank.
You cannot edit a blank page.
Mondays are my writing day and most weeks I meet the blank page happily, but today I feel a bit scattered thanks to a 4 hour flight delay which led to a very late night mixed with some serious jet lag. In reality these are fantastic problems to have, but they make thinking and writing a bit more complicated as my brain feels like absolute mush. I keep telling my husband I feel like I am still somewhere over the pacific, stranded in mid-air.
While there is a very real part of me that wants to crawl back into bed and leave whatever I might write unsaid, I find myself facing the blank page because this is how I return to myself, making sense of the world through words. I am also acutely aware that you cannot edit a blank page, meaning if I write nothing I will remain exactly where I am, no forward momentum upon which to grow.
I find myself facing the blank page because this is how I return to myself, making sense of the world through words.
Would anyone notice if I chose not to write? Would anyone care if my words didn’t make it onto the page? Would anyone flinch if my ideas didn’t arrive in their inbox? Probably not. And yet, here I am, showing up for my words and determined to write something if only just for myself - and also because I know there is value in staying awake as I adjust to the proper time zone. I have a handful of stories that I could be editing, but that requires brain power I don’t currently have, so instead I will share what is on my mind after spending the past week offline.
When I touched back down onto familiar ground and landed back into the life I left behind for a much needed and much appreciated vacation, I found myself wishing I was still away, not from the blank page exactly but from the need to face my instagram feed. Every single time I hit pause, log off from social media, and focus on the life right in front of me, I find myself grasping for that version - the real one that happens entirely offline.
I found myself wishing I was still away, not from the blank page exactly but from the need to face my instagram feed.
Like every other break I have ever taken, no matter how long or how short, I find myself hesitating to return to those tiny squares, acutely aware that what happens there serves as a distraction from the life I actually enjoy living. Every time I step away I find that I need social media less and less, and returning becomes more and more difficult.
When I finally found the courage to log back on, I was hit full force with vacation photos that were not my own and despite having hundreds I could post, I don’t feel like sharing a single one. Rather than contribute to the noise, I feel grounded in my own memories and I am therefore protecting the 609 images I took for myself (besides this one). But choosing not to share comes with it’s own set of consequences, why be online if you choose to show up outside of the ‘prescribed’ way?!
We live in a society where everything is captured and shared online, I have been there and I have done that, but I have since opted for real over curated, and truth over fiction. This feeling, this realization, this internal knowing is the very same reason I originally chose to walk away from instagram all those months ago. I do not love living my life on two completely different planes, one foot in real life and the other foot online. I also do not want to share everything and prefer to keep certain images and memories just for myself.
Perhaps I have grown, no longer striving for the same things I once needed or perhaps that space has simply changed, but either way I am finding myself once again pulling away. While there is a very real benefit to sharing my words online, I am finding that I prefer to share them in my own way, free of likes and algorithms, and false narratives.
I have returned from my vacation with a deeper realization that the life right in front of me is the one I choose, it is the one that matters most, it is the one I want to protect at all costs. I will continue to write and edit and face the blank page while deciding how and if and where I spend my time online, trusting that my work and my words will find those who need them most.
The life right in front of me is the one I choose, it is the one that matters most, it is the one I want to protect at all costs.
How are you showing up for your life, real or online or both? Do you prefer pretty pictures or honest words? Do you feel drawn to social media or slowly slipping away? Do you find yourself avoiding or embracing your own blank page?