I’m edgy, adventurous, exciting and maybe even a little intimidating. I am always pumping iron at the gym or running marathons, partying with the who’s who of the fashion world or strutting about the streets of my city in the perfect LBDs.
Image source: Google, copyright-free image under Creative Commons License
At least, that’s the tale my Instagram tells.
In reality, I am the queen of watching entire seasons of popular sitcoms in one sitting, and not even remembering the last time I put on pants! Yeah, yeah, the perks of working from home. But getting back to the point, my social media brand is way cooler than I really am and as much as I’d love to be half the kicka*s woman I am in the online microcosm of my life, I am not.
Suggested read: Confessions of a self-proclaimed perfectionist
I visit the gym only when my weighing scale flashes a sudden ‘urgent’ or go running a marathon when some friend bribes me with a lucrative incentive for it. I am partying on some weekend set apart for meeting those important people and well, okay, strutting about the streets often, because…well, shopping and food! 😉 But that’s the thing. My social media brand is just a highlights reel from my life and features only those moments that I choose to show.
Image source: Pixabay, under Creative Commons License
I do not wish to show the world the mental notes I make when at the gym (most of which involve thinking of food and getting the hell out of there) or the laughter riots that ensue when my friends and I are negotiating just why I should run the marathon or even the excitement after my shopping sprees, when I return home and put on all the clothes I bought, one by one, carefully teaming them up with the accessories I own and deciding which one goes best. Even if I am not going to follow through with the combination when I have to actually wear it. And believe you me, that is not for a long time after the shopping. I mean, it’d have to be an apocalypse to pull me out of my no-pants, coffee-chugging, couch potato zone, you know.
I do not wish to show the world just how ecstatic I am when I remember just the exact word I wanted to use in a sentence in one of my drafts nor tell the world how blue-sy I feel on rainy afternoons. I do not post updates about how my new draft is coming along or just how much I’d love to retire after 35 and live in a library of a home, breathing in the smell of old, dusty books and gamming in on artsy cappuccinos. I do not imagine taking off my strong, independent sash and show the world the incredibly hopeless, emotional and sensitive weirdo I am. Not even the fact that those labels aren’t exclusive in my mind, even if the world thinks so.
I just don’t care to explain. I don’t care to defend. I don’t care to show them everything.
Wonder why, then, am I writing this?
Image source: Google, copyright-free image under Creative Commons License
Because not a long while ago, a friend told me about this one guy who wanted to ask me out but found me too intimidating. Of course, he’d been listening close and hard to the tales those cyber imps were whispering in his ears. I knew this guy in passing and when I got to hear that he didn’t approach me because he thought he wasn’t ‘exciting enough’ to have a shot, I thought “well, now that’s some crap.” But too long, too late. It didn’t take too long in the conversation afterward to realize that many of my now-friends also held off on getting to know me because I seemed ‘unapproachable.’ And THIS bothers me.
Image source: Pixabay, under Creative Commons License
Suggested read: Confessions of a chronic yes girl
I realized that while sharing experiences on social media was all good, our quest to cut off ‘cool’ slices of our lives and line them up for devouring online wasn’t the best of practices. Our shiny little blips of ‘perfect’ lives online were not honest. Not real. I realized that this careful curated social media brand was such a big, fat lie that harmed me so much so that people couldn’t walk up to me and say ‘hi.’ And so, I have decided that while I cannot do much about the witty captions (ahh, well, I am witty 😉 ), I shall cut away everything glossy and replace it with a big, fat blob of honesty. Coz everything smooth and sparkly is boring. It’s uninspiring. It’s cliché.
And REAL- REAL is well, real. It’s beautiful. And that’s as closest to being me online, as I can ever get.
Featured image source: Pixabay, under Creative Commons License
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