I am a memory hoarder.

Being in your 20s is special because for the first time in your life, you start to have memories that span over a decade.  When you’re ten years old and younger, ‘the past ten years’ is all you know.  They’re not memories; they’re just your life.  In your teens, ‘the past ten years’ include your childhood, but in a way, you still feel like a child, so it’s not really valid to say things like, “I remember this one time when I was a kid…”  Plus, you’re probably trying desperately to define yourself as an individual, so anything that you associate with childhood is ‘uncool.’  Now, in your 20’s, you have memories of your childhood, high school, and college.  You’ve actually known people for ten years or more.  You actually know and embrace nostalgia.  It feels good talking to other twenty-somethings about things like that episode of Rocko’s Modern Life when they made Wacky Delly or about Dunk-a-roos, Caprisun, and Fruit by the Foot.  It’s like you’ll never really forget those things because you have a collaborative memory with your generation, and especially with the internet, pop culture references are just a YouTube search away.

But what about memories that weren’t so universal?  What about the ones that were specific to your experiences as a child, as a member of your family, and as a resident of your hometown?  When I was a preteen, I saved everything.  It was almost as if I knew that they would spark a world of memories for me ten years later.  Maybe that episode of Full House when Danny, Jesse, and Joey dug up a time capsule from their childhood really got to me.   Who knows, but I have SO much stuff.  From high school, I mostly just have my photo albums and year books, but from grade school, I have AOL chat conversations printed out, original song lyrics from my aspiring popstar days, photo albums, *NSYNC and O-Town memorabilia (this is an understatement), journals, report cards, phone books, posters, gel pens, old seashells, and so much more.  I even have a year’s worth of printouts of Z100’s Weekly Top 40:

Why I printed them out every week for a year is beyond me.  I have all of these things though, and I can name a story for everything.  Why did I keep them all these years?  And why is it mentally exhausting having to let all of it go?  I think I’m just a memory hoarder.  Yesterday, I caught myself using a word that for years has been forbidden from my everyday vocabulary — regret.  I said to myself, But what if in five years I regret throwing this away?  That word is a super red flag for me.  It just screams out that there is something there that I don’t feel complete with.

As I move out of this house, I fear that my memories of it and of my childhood are going to become hazy.  I feel like I’m losing a part of myself because my childhood is a part of me… Isn’t it?  Those adolescent years were clearly something I’ve tried to preserve for as long as I could.  It was a time when my job title was #1 *NSYNC fanatic.  A time when we treated sleepovers like it was a trip to Vegas; we looked forward to it all week.  It was a time when I wore a uniform 200 days out of the year.  A time when we didn’t even know what ‘organic food’ meant.  A time when the only schedule I knew was the after school Nickelodeon shows announced by Stick Stickly.  I didn’t care about winning the lottery, but I did want that free trip to the Universal Studios in Orlando Florida, so I could meet Tommy Pickles and Doug Funnie.

This was also a time in my life when my family was the most complete it could be under one household.  Five of us at the dinner table.  My pop reading home entertainment magazines in bed.  My older brother barging into my room, like he was Buzz from Home Alone.  My eldest brother cracking up at Chris Farley in the family room that housed one of our two TV’s.  My mom on the phone as she smoked a cigarette and cooked dinner.  When I leave next week, it will just be my pop here until he sells the house.  Obviously, a lot has happened since the 90s and early 2000s, so this sounds much more dramatic than it really is.  My brothers have long since moved out, and my mother passed away eight years ago.  Once I leave, my part in the story of our house will be over, too.  If I throw away all of the keepsakes from my adolescence, will I still be able to tell my story?  Or am I just afraid of getting old?  Is that what’s really going on here?  Sooner or later, I’ll have another decade under my sleeve.  How will I try to preserve, then, THREE decades to memory?  One of my greatest fears has got to be losing my memory and not being able to tell stories about my parents to my children one day.  This is a crazy fear, I know, but I think that’s why I’ve been holding on so tightly to these memories.  It is bizarre though, being afraid of losing your memory at 23 years old.

I was with a group  of friends the other day, and we were talking about this idea of letting go.  Someone suggested taking pictures of everything before I throw them out, but another friend chimed in, “But then you’re living through artificial memories of what used to be.”  The memory is inorganic.  It’s like using cheat sheets.  I really have to let go, and trust that that beautiful time in my life, before my mom passed away, is living out in my life right now, just in a different form.  Ten years ago, my nephews, my boyfriend, and some of my dearest friends weren’t in my life.  It’s like my mom just reincarnated her love in all of these people for me and for me to share with the world.  Why try to hold on to these THINGS (because that’s all they are) when I could be giving it back to the world instead?

In Bikram yoga, we are often taught to breathe in all that’s good and positive in the world, and breathe out everything in our body that doesn’t serve us.  This stuff that I’ve collected is not serving its purpose anymore.  I’m just attaching the memories that I already have to them.  This is going to be a whole new chapter in my life.  It’s time to exhale and make room for all things new and inviting.

 *NSYNC posters that I finally parted ways with after graduating college.

 A seashell that I can’t recall the origin of but I can remember the weight and the texture perfectly.

Follow my move on twitter: #livelifemoveout

The good, the bad, the unknown

My brain hurts.  Today, I helped my boyfriend strip down his closet, separating what clothes he was going to donate and what he was going to bring with him on our move.  When I got home, I finished up a suitcase that I’ve been filling with clothes all week.  After that, I looked up some job openings in the SF area, and for the past three and a half hours, I’ve been researching accommodations for all the places we’re stopping at during our road trip.  We officially have two weeks until our departure date.  Fourteen days, and I’m gone.  Fourteen days, and I won’t be sitting in this kitchen anymore.

I really wasn’t going to write today.  Past few days, even weeks, I’ve just been so fearful that I won’t have anything of substance to say.  This blog is called The Sum of 20-Something: Exploring and Living the 20-Something Phenomenon.  Well, when us 20-somethings are not traveling, concert-going, heartbreaking, happy-houring, and aspiring, we’re doing this: overwhelming ourselves.  Usually my mind goes through the day like a good student in a lecture class, listening and taking notes like mad, but lately, it’s constantly got this on playback: have to do this, have to go to that, have to pack this, have to book that, have to meet this person.  Where do I even fit any ideas for blog posts?

As I was packing earlier, my iPod was on shuffle, and I’m sitting on my bedroom floor surrounded by shopping bags, wheely luggages, and mounds of clothes, belts, shoes, and purses.  My phone keeps distracting me, the way facebook distracts me when I’m trying to do work on my laptop; it makes the process extra long and painful.  Somehow I go into this daze, thinking, not about my room and all my stuff, but about my friends.  They’re not going to be five minutes away anymore; we’re going to be in completely different time zones!  Everyone is saying they’re going to visit, but still, they’re not going to be… right there anymore.  I start to cry, leaning my head against the side of the bed.  Then, I realize Coldplay is playing on my iPod, and Chris Martin is singing to me:

Nobody said it was easy
It’s such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
Oh, take me back to the start

…… Really?  What’s next?  Vitamin C?

Okay though, I get it.  Nobody said this move was going to be ‘easy.’  For years, I’ve been talking about moving out, but never really imagining what the day would be like when I leave.  What is going to be on the other side of this mysterious hill?  I know what it’s like to visit SF, but to live there longer than two weeks?  To move out of my parents house and move in with my boyfriend?  To buy my own toilet paper and dish washing soap?

I don’t really have a point to this post, other than to acknowledge that this is real, baby.  This feeling of worry — yea, it will come… and it will pass.  So, I carry on.

20something profile: Isabel

Thanks to David, creator of 20Somethings in 2013, for featuring my profile on his blog!

20somethings Blog

This post was written by Isabel, who traveled through Europe:

My name is Isabel, and I’m 23 years old. I studied at Baruch College in midtown Manhattan. It’s a business school and part of the City University of New York (CUNY). I did not want to move away for college partly to save money but mostly out of fear of leaving the house and town I grew up in.

Attending a commuter school in New York City wasn’t your typical American big university “college experience.” Every student commuted either from New Jersey, other parts of Manhattan, or the other NYC boroughs. The campus consisted of three buildings in total. Every student complained, in true New York fashion, about not having dorms near the campus, about not having working escalators, and especially about the curriculum.

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A T-Shirt’s Worth A Thousand Words

In preparation for my move to the Bay Area, I’m currently in the middle of a closet purge. My two best friends came over to help assess the outfits and pieces that I’ve collected over the years. It was very similar to this scene from Sex & the City The Movie:

There were some items from high school that somehow managed to survive my numerous closet purges in recent years. We weeded through those along with cocktail dresses, scandalous barely-there club outfits, trouser pants, summer dresses, mini skirts, button downs, and even basic tees and tanks. They insisted that one can never have enough basics, but I took a good look at some of my ribbed tank tops, and just shook my head. I don’t wear these anymore. Even if I had the sudden urge to start wearing ribbed tanks again, I’d rather just buy new ones. I did come across pieces that I don’t wear anymore but only because it was lost somewhere in my closet. If I could still make them work, I decided to keep them. Other than those exceptions, there were clothes that ran their course and just had to be retired, even if they had no defects. I ended up with three piles: definitely keep, donate to friends, and donate to the Philippines.

There was one group of clothes that I didn’t even bother modeling for my friends because, up until last night, I had assumed that I would just keep and bring all of them to the Bay Area with me: my pajamas.

Who really cares what you wear to sleep? It’s the only time in the day that you are truly liberated from any trends and the need to impress others. You can wear a raggedy, stained baseball tee with Care Bear pajama bottoms (this combo actually exists by the way). I went through my pajama drawer last night, thinking I was going to take everything with me, but I realized that I own a damn lot of pajama shirts! I wanted to be as minimalistic as possible and get rid of some that I didn’t wear anymore, but the thing is, I wear all of them — just in rotation. It’s literally in a pile. I wear whatever is on top, and after it goes in the laundry, I fold it and put it at the bottom of the pile, then choose the shirt at the top of the pile for the next few nights. (I never realized how OCD this procedure was until just now.) Okay, I thought, maybe I could narrow down the pile by only keeping the ones that have sentimental value. Well, actually, they all have sentimental value.

These are shirts that I’ve gotten from joining, volunteering, directing, or supporting various organizations. None of these have I ever paid for, unless it was part of a registration fee. All of these shirts have a story behind them:

Shirts from my years at Queen of Peace High School. Our school colors were green and gold, and our mascot was the griffin.

I was part of our high school choir, and we ordered shirts for our competition at Hershey Park, which we partook in during my junior and senior years:

The following tops are from the years I was involved with the Filipino Intercollegiate Networking Dialogue (FIND), Inc. during college. I volunteered at our semi-annual conferences regularly since 2008 and served on the executive board since 2009. I served as the National Chairperson my senior year.

BOSES was the fall conference we hosted in 2010, where I delivered a speech before 1,200 delegates at Fordham University. The conference focused on the freedom of expression and its impact on Filipino history and on Filipino communities both in the Philippines and the US. Every time I wear this shirt, I’m reminded of all of the hard work that my team and I put into the conference and the pride we shared during the 2-day conference weekend.

The FIND, Inc. National Board 2010-2011 with one of our guests speakers, Ruby Veridiano:

In 2010 and 2011, I walked in the EIF Revlon Walk for Women in memory of my mom. In both years combined, my team and I raised over $3000 toward cancer research, support, and awareness.

2010 Team, Malakas Kami (We Are Strong):

2011 Team:

Isn’t funny that the shirts that I pretty much got for free are the ones that carry the most memories? They are little insights into what hobbies, interests, and what groups of people I associated with at the time. They represent my generation and my values. As it turns out, I’m only donating one shirt:

It was a gift from my aunt. She bought matching ones for me and her son, who has been like a brother to me since 1991. It’s quite possibly the oldest shirt that I own. I don’t wear it anymore because the cotton is a little stiff and the collar is too high for my comfort, but I’ve never been able to throw it away after all these years. It’s so classic 90s with the homage to Friends, and the fact that my little bro also has one makes it even more special. If I talk anymore about it, I might just have to keep it. Maybe I can cut it up and make it into a vintage tank top… It’s just got too much history to give it up now.

Ain’t No Moment High Enough

How many times would you say you have completely surrendered to the moment?  You freed your self from obligations, judgment, expectations, physical pain, and everything else that occupies our minds 99% of the day.  How many times in the past year have you accomplished this?

Yesterday, I experienced one of those moments.  I was fortunate enough to be part of a group of five friends who hiked to the tower at the top of Mohonk Mountain in New Paltz, NY.  It was  an impromptu day trip that organically came together.  Everyone was free on this random Tuesday in April, and as soon as we set off on our journey, it was magic.  There was no trail for the first four miles.  My friend, Dana, led the way using just her memory.  We walked through mud, thorn patches, farms, private property, and steep, unmarked trails.  When we finally came across the actual trails, one was red but chained off with a sign that said, “Trail closed for the season.”  We walked on the flat trail for half a mile, but Dana wanted us to experience the Lemon Squeeze, which was a labyrinth of boulders, so we ignored the closed trail sign.  We ventured through these incredible rock formations:

Dana let us know when it was going to get a little more challenging, but like a true leader, she reminded us to follow our hearts and trust our bodies.  We squeezed through caves and crevices and reached the final part of the Lemon Squeeze that required us to climb three or four wooden ladders in a narrow crevice.  It felt like we were in an ad for Patagonia.  We could not see what was waiting for us at the top, so one by one, as we each pushed ourselves off the final segment of the ladders, we each experienced our own moment of awe when the view of New York State surrounded us.  We all said how the challenge seemed a lot less scary after conquering it.  It reminded me of this part in Paolo Coelho’s book, The Pilgrimage, when Paolo must climb a waterfall, despite his injuries, despite his fatigue and weakness.  He told his leader that he could not do it; he was about to accept failure, but after he finally accepted the challenge and made it to the top, he saw from the top of the waterfall that it was not as threatening as it seemed from the bottom.

We had made it a long way, but we were not at our destination yet.  We had to walk up a few flights of stairs to make it to the top of the Tower.  The extra push was well worth it.  We were truly at the very top of Mohonk Mountain.  This tower looked so far and so small from where we had parked our car.  We enjoyed some sandwiches and chocolate bars for lunch, and as we ate, we could all feel raindrops begin to drizzle over us.  What a perfect gift from the summit.  We covered up and packed up our things as quickly as we could to try and beat the downpour of rain that seemed to be coming.  We didn’t have to climb the boulders on the way down.  In fact, that labyrinth trail was only marked with arrows for the ascent up, not coming back down.  We took an easy, flat trail back down.  The rain had never come.  The drizzle at the top of the tower seemed like it was just for dramatic effect.  We stopped by the Mohonk Mountain Resort to use the restrooms and to buy a map (better late than never).  At some point, we stopped following the trail again, made it to paved ground, but admitted to ourselves that we were lost.  No worries, we just followed one of the main roads in the direction we hoped was the right way to our car (it was), and it was at this point in the day that I completely felt myself surrender to the moment.  It’s not that I was worried the whole day, but walking along the road with the mountain that we had just climbed to our left and open farms to our right was when I just stopped trying to figure out how everything managed to work themselves out.  The air in New Paltz, as I had been saying the whole day, was fresh and clean, but on the walk to the car, it was especially sweet.  The weather was not cold, not hot, not even warm — it was just perfect.  My four friends and I had just shared the same adventure.  No man left behind, no competition, no complaining.  Part of me wanted to try and find something wrong with the moment.  Motivational speaker, Brian Tracy, often says that guilt causes us to question our happiness and our success when things seem to be ‘too good to be true.’  That was just my human nature at work.  Why resist though?  The moment was perfect in every way.

Is this the year I retire the short-shorts?

It’s that time of the year again: when I fall back in love with New Jersey.  There is nothing like the tri-state area during the spring/summer… Nothing.  The weather is warmer, everyone is happier, dressing up is less complicated, and life is just easier.  I told my boyfriend that we had to relocate to California before I fall back in love with our home state, but since we set the date already, I’ll just consider this a long distance relationship until the weather in NJ becomes shitty again, and my reasons for moving are reinstated.  For now, I’ll enjoy it while I’m here.

Yesterday, it was 82 degrees — the warmest it’s been since last August.  I abandoned my post just to be outside and enjoy the arrival of spring.  I decided it was the perfect day for a bike ride, so I changed into my army-colored denim shorts, but my god, something didn’t feel right.  Up until the weather got a little warmer, my daily attire consisted of either yoga crops or leggings.  Sure, in the Bikram studio, I wear just a bra and hot yoga shorts, which basically looks like a two-piece bathing suit, but outside the yoga studio, I haven’t worn shorts or exposed my legs since the summer time.  When I got outside with my bike, I considered going back up to my room to change, but my ego convinced me not to.  The weather was warm enough, and they were the same shorts, and I was the same size. I was just not used to the feeling of short-shorts anymore, that’s all.  Meanwhile, on my bike ride through the park, I was dealing with major camel toe and encountering men saying, “I love you” as I biked past them.  I was not used to this attention anymore.  Of course, there were men in Italy who would make comments at me as I walked by, but it was 30 degrees then, and I was bundled up in at least four layers with leggings and combat boots, so at least I knew they were commenting on my pretty face and not my thunder thighs.

I always wondered when this day would come, but I think this may be the year that I retire the short-shorts.  I always see (especially at the Jersey shore) moms in their 40s wearing short-shorts, and I think, Aren’t they too old for that?  Like every early 20-something, I have considered myself immune to the effects of aging, but I guess my metabolism is not what it used to be, or maybe I just need to update my short collection.  The shorts were six years old, come to think of it.  I was a totally different person with different ‘fashion’ (if you could call it that).  I should go shopping and find some short-shorts more suitable to my 23-year old personality and not my 18-year old, coming-of-age, skinny bitch self.

This Thing Called Moving

I’m moving to the Bay Area, California in one month, and just as I have been avoiding packing up my life into boxes and planning out my trip, I have been avoiding this post.  I’ve been avoiding it because writing about it will force me to face reality.  I’ve got one month to move out of the house that I grew up in — pack up what I want to bring and throw out the rest.  I’ve got one month to say bye to all of my friends who I grew up with and all of my relatives who will soon be far away.  I’ve got one month to help prepare the house for when my pop is ready to sell it sometime later this year.  Where do I even begin?  Oh, and if you haven’t figured it out by now, I haven’t got the first clue about moving.

I could sit here all day and list reasons why I don’t want to leave my house… I actually did list them but deleted what I came up with because I realize that’s not what this post is about.  This post is about me admitting that I’m scared.  I’m scared of the unknown.  I’m scared of moving in with someone, even though it’s my boyfriend — the only person I’d ever consider moving in with.  I’m scared of my decision; is this ‘the right decision?’  I’m scared that I’m going to end up hating it.  I’m even scared that I might come across an old memory as I’m packing, which will cause me to breakdown and cry and regret this decision wholeheartedly.

But… This post is also about me coming to terms with my fears.  I’m scared, but I’m doing it anyway.

What happened to all the reasons I had for MAKING this decision in the first place?  Getting away from NJ winters, being surrounded by the great outdoors, living near my nephews as they grow up, etc.  What about all the times I told myself, You will never know until you try… Your family’s got your back… You can always come back to NJ… Why do they all get thrown out the window when the time actually comes to ‘make moves?’ (pun intended) This is the classic case of me settling back into my comfort zone and allowing my fears to make excuses for me.

I met with a few of my former co-workers last week, and we caught up over drinks and french fries.  I told them that my boyfriend and I set the date for our move: May 10th.  One of them, who is now one of my closest friends, said, “Izzy, you have the most integrity out of anyone I know.  Whenever you say you’re going to do something, you fucking do it.”  Damn, that’s a lot of pressure.  Now I have to go through with this whole moving thing.  I blatantly told them, “Honestly, I’m really scared.”  The thought had been manifesting itself in my head, and now it was alive in my words.  I felt relieved to just say it, but then I started to let it get to me.  I started picking fights with my boyfriend, getting defensive when asked about my move, refusing to write about what was going on, and so on.  Of course, then I felt bad for not doing the things that I’m ‘supposed to be’ doing instead, like actually packing, getting rid of stuff, mapping out our road trip, planning get togethers with people, researching Bay Area rent and cost of living, and whatever else people who move do.  I was also getting comfortable in the fact that I ‘didn’t know how to move,’ so I was just avoiding it altogether, but with thirty-one days left before our move out date, I can only avoid the process for so long.

A few weeks ago, my pop said at the dinner table, “It will be sad pulling out of the driveway for the last time.”  I tried to just ignore him because I didn’t want to think about leaving for good.  Obviously, our house has a lot of sentimental value.

It’s 4:30pm right now, and it’s 82 degrees outside — the hottest day of the year so far.  I’ve been in my kitchen trying to put my fears into words for the past three hours, while my pop just stepped outside to enjoy the weather from a bench in the park in front of our house.  I won’t have many opportunities to join him anymore.  What am I still doing at this computer?

Where is home, anyway?

I would like to thank my fellow bloggers at (Sense)Story Perception for featuring me as Writer of the Week this past week. I had so much fun collaborating with my dear friend & one of my inspirations, Kat Oakes. She started (Sense)Story Perception as a collection of stories told through the five senses. The writers are a group of 20-something’s as well, so I thought it only appropriate to reblog one of their many inspiring pieces. This one is called “Where is home, anyway?” by Christine O’Dea. It’s a perfect depiction of the life of a young traveler and reminds us that the place we call home can be anywhere we want it to be. Thanks again, guys! http://www.sensestoryperception.com

(Sense)story Perception

“I can’t wait to go home,” said my new friend.  “But it makes me feel better that we can all see the same sky at night.”

We were sitting on a sand dune in the Sahara Desert around midnight (I know, it’s borderline unbelievable to me too), talking about the remarkable sky that our eyes beheld.  I kept thinking, “How did we even get here?”  That two hour camel ride was a surreal blur that my body couldn’t hold on to long enough for my brain to process.

Laying on a pile of sand wasn’t new for me, but seeing a perfectly clear, breathtaking, and surely the best night sky I will ever see in this lifetime, was a moment I’ve always longed for.  You know when you have dreams and visionary flashes where you put yourself in an Instagram picture?  An Australian beach or maybe a picturesque side street…

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The Facebook Comfort Zone

Before writing this post, my boyfriend warned me, “Careful, you might offend all of the facebook lovers out there.”  It was a fair warning, but I am not here to bash facebook or its users.  This is more of a reflection of what my use and preconceptions of facebook have become over the years.

I’ve had a facebook account for just about six years.  I made it just after they stopped doing the college email address requirement (our parents don’t even know about those days).  Throughout my senior year of high school, I didn’t have a facebook.  My friends would talk about it, but just as I had never made a myspace, I was adamant about not making a facebook.  I didn’t want to get ‘sucked in.’    After graduation, my friend asked if she could create my profile.  Her unspoken argument: How could you go into the summer after our senior year without being tagged in all our pictures?  How could you go into college without a facebook?  Apathetically, I said, “Sure, whatever…” but in reality, it was the perfect excuse to have a facebook without the guilt of actually making one for myself.  I didn’t technically get sucked in, but who was I kidding?  I had caved, and there was no going back.

The Early Years of facebook meant:

Your profile picture.  The perfect way to display yourself just as you want to come across to others.

Tagging.  I thought this was God’s gift to man.  Hovering over people’s faces to see who they were?  Sure, maybe you knew most of the people in the pictures you were tagged in, but what about that person… what was their name again?  We take this for granted now, but tagging was very innovative at the time.  Also, little did I know how helpful it would be during college when we were all meeting more people than we could count, literally.

Your tagged pictures.  God, I was so vain back then.  I would click through the same pictures of myself multiple times in the day, wondering how other users saw me.  Do I look pretty in this picture?  Do I look like I’m living the life?

Notifications.  I can’t even remember how notifications were indicated before they incorporated the red tally, but all I know is that whenever they would appear, it would be like discovering little candies in your Christmas stocking.  Hell, they still are like that.

‘Keeping in touch’ was not the main use of facebook back then.  Most of the friends I had were from my graduating class.  Even after our graduation, we saw each other pretty frequently, so what need did we have for keeping in touch?  Still, I can remember us writing inside jokes or posting humorous videos/pictures on each other’s walls.  There were no meems back then, and there was no such thing as posting something to your own wall.  You had a “status update” that had to begin with “I am” and could only be 100 characters.  Remember those days?  You also had to physically click ‘refresh’ in order to see if your friends updated their status; it did not auto-refresh.  Also, if you reached the bottom of the feed, you had to click to see more.  (God, we were like cavemen.)

I actually came to love facebook, especially for the photo sharing.  Since I got my first camera in the 5th grade, I’ve always been the friend to take pictures during our hangouts or outings.  I went through a picturetrail, photobucket, friendster, xanga… (Okay, xanga was not for photo sharing, but I just wanted to throw that little piece of nostalgia in there.) Facebook, however, succeeded in combining your friends’ profiles with photo sharing.  No need to post your photos anywhere else!  I felt obligated to post my pictures.  My friends wanted to see pictures of themselves, and I was going to deliver.  This is probably what brought me deeper and deeper into my facbeook usage.  I think from July 2007 to December 2012, there was not one event that I took pictures at and didn’t post them.  In retrospect, I’ve dedicated days and days of my life to arranging my photos, uploading them to facebook, arranging my albums, and keeping up with tags and comments — DAYS, MAYBE MONTHS of my life gone!

I’ve tried ‘quitting facebook’ cold turkey several times before.  The first was during the second semester of my freshman year of college when I was A) probably upset over a boy and B) spending way too much time on it, when I should’ve been doing homework, or I don’t know, SOMETHING ELSE other than facebook.  The second time was sometime later during my college years when I was definitely upset over a boy.  Both times, my friends would tell me to come back to facebook, so that their picture count would go up again.  And you know what facebook so cleverly implemented, so as not to lose its members permanently?  You were always able to reactivate your profile after ‘deleting it,’ so you really had nothing to lose.  Your profile and pictures would be there waiting for you, should you ever decide to come back.  Bastards.  The second time I deactivated my facebook, they even included a survey of why I was deactivating it with reasons, such as: being unproductive/spending too much time on it, being bothered by friend requests or current friends, applying for work but there is unprofessional content on my personal profile, etc.  If I selected any of the reasons, a little popup would appear with ways to counteract my reasons, like “Did you know you can adjust the privacy settings of your profile, so that only the people you allow can see your content?”  AND if that wasn’t enough, facebook would ask me one final time, “Are you sure you want to deactivate your profile?” and there would be pictures of my closest friends (how did they know?) at the bottom with the caption, “So and so is going to miss you!… And so and so too!”  No matter how long I went with a deactivated profile, I always came back, almost as if there could be no other way.

Facebook has become so advanced in communicating with others internationally.  I think it’s wonderful that I can keep in touch with my relatives in the Philippines, but at the same time, this ease of communication has almost made us primitive.  With facebook, I can share things with them easily, knowing they will see it, but in the 90s and early 2000s when email was our only form of communication, other than a phone call, responses weren’t necessarily summed up in one word.  If you were going to respond at all to an email, out of courtesy, you’d have to put some thought into it.  Make it worth their while, or don’t respond at all.  With facebook, commenting and liking is so simple.  Even if you haven’t seen each other in years, it feels as if you have a consistent back and forth exchange.  Even if the other party doesn’t respond with a comment or a like, at least you could see what they were up to by going through their profile pics or recent posts.  This is all well and great and everything, but now, making that extra effort to call/text/write is almost unnecessary.  No need to write an email to catch up because you can just look at the person’s profile.  I understand that with the internet/technology boom, this is how our interactions are evolving, but to be honest, I’m not too keen on this.  I don’t have the energy anymore to meticulously edit my profile, so that it exactly matches all of my current interests, ideals, revelations, plans, and so on.  I still haven’t figured those all out; why would I want someone else to figure it out for me?  My profile doesn’t define me, dammit.  It just doesn’t.  My profile has, in a way, grown up with me.  You can see how I’ve physically grown from late adolescence to my early twenties.  You can see my relationships, my party days, the extracurricular activities I was involved in, the people I used to (or still do) surround myself with.  You can see it all there in front of you.  Facebook even utilized that categorization of years, so you can skip all of the current stuff I’m into and ‘get to know’ how I was when I used to dance on tables and play beer pong every other night.  I sure as hell don’t regret those years, but I have learned a great deal about myself and about life since those days.  I can speak for myself, but can my pictures?  No!  We think we know what people are like or what their ideals are from looking at their profiles, but it only grazes the surface of who people really are (hopefully).

I knew I wanted an outlet to write and share my pictures in a creative way.  I tried to convince myself that facebook would suffice, but it became my comfort zone.  I have over a thousand “friends,” so getting likes on something I create or say is not difficult.  I also thought I could keep up with current events through what people posted on their newsfeeds, but it just all seemed too superficial to be authentic.  So why didn’t I just look to other social networks?  I knew blogs, apps, and other online communities were out there, but I had invested so much time over the years making myself seem like a decent person on facebook that I just couldn’t do it all over again on a completely different website.  I was old-fashioned; I knew how to work with facebook, so that’s what I wanted to stick with… until this past February.

Without making a big deal about it, I gave up facebook for lent.  40 days with absolutely no posting, no uploading, no sharing, and no clicking through feeds or pictures.  This time I didn’t deactivate my profile; I just logged out and didn’t log back in until this past Monday.  Not having to document my life for others allowed me to be more present to the moment and document my life mentally.  It’s funny though because although I was not posting anything to my facebook, people I’d see in person would still ask me about things I was doing because of what my friends and loved ones were sharing on their facebooks.  They’d say, “I saw you went to a concert last night.  How was it?”  Great, thanks for asking…  How did you know that?  I guess I can’t run away from facebook, but not going on it every hour allowed me to be open to other forms of social media.  Now I blog; I read; I create.  I know, I know… I’ve been under a rock this whole time.

I personally can’t JUST use facebook for what it’s good for, like staying connected with long lost relatives or friends, marketing yourself and/or your business, etc.  If I add facebook to my bookmark bar again, I will click it every time I need to dull my thoughts.  It’s like the tabloid that you pick up when you’re waiting in line at the grocery; you don’t need that information, but it’s still there for your mind to absorb.  I realize it doesn’t have to be used for this reason, but because it started out as such a superficial outlet for me, that’s what it ends up being.  Maybe I’ve got it all wrong.  Maybe I’m just stuck with that mentality because my social network was witness to my most vulnerable years, but it was the luck of the draw that my generation grew up with facebook, and this is how I’m learning from it.

Questions for fun:
– Do you have a facebook?  How long ago did you create your profile?  How did it impact your personality?
– What do you use facebook for nowadays?

 

Top picture taken from FlickCC.

The Guest House

Wanted to share this poem that my dear friend and yoga instructor, Kelly Corcoran, recited during savasana yesterday.

The Guest House by Jelaluddin Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Photo credit: Charlie Gomez
http://www.charliegomezphoto.com