The Dirty Laundry

I've been reading, hearing, and thinking a lot lately about the conundrum we all have in 2013 and the social reality in which we live with one another. I've heard a sermon on it at church, read a few blog posts, saw a status or two, and had a few conversations with friends all about this issue. The issue of our dichotomy as young people with iPhones, iPads, and instagrams. The dichotomy between life as it actually is and life as you present it. Your life as it is neatly displayed on your Facebook facade or your life as it is in the nitty gritty.

I've had feelings that go both ways. I've sat there and rolled my eyes at the girls who put on makeup and tease their hair into a styled ponytail to work out so that their fitness blogs are cutely adorned with their hawt workout pics. Yes, I just wrote "hawt." Just admit that you eat a heaping bowl of ice cream sometimes just to make me feel better about myself! I've also thought to myself: dang. You go girl. You work out in 3 inches of makeup and fake lashes. You do that. Power to you because Lord knows I wouldn't ever put that much effort into working up a sweat. Work that updo.

And being in your 20's poses this challenge in a particularly difficult way. This is the decade of life stages coming through in rapid succession. College life, graduation, working world, independent living, engagements, marriages, kids, moves, trips, vacations, and more all start to pop up on our feeds every time we flip our thumb to scroll to the next screen. With all the happiness, success, cuteness, and beautiful things that people are doing and seeing, you can kind of feel like you're not quite making the cut. Or even worse, you start to harbor a sense of envy and disdain for anyone who seems to have a Pinterest-perfect little life. You might start to think: Why is she always so stylish? I could never afford those clothes. Or..Why are their kids always so cute and well-behaved? Mine are terrors most of the time. Or...Look where they got to go on vacation. I can't remember the last time I was on a beach. Those thoughts start to get dangerous. I have them from time to time, and it does absolutely nothing to harm the target in my head. The only person whom it damages is me. Getting caught up in the competition is just not worth it. I suppose I really am real-life-Anna when I'm writing on my blog, but there are definitely bad days (this Monday, ahem...) that I choose not to share and relive every time I scroll through my old posts. And that's okay.

I bet that even the fake-lash-cake-make-up-workout-girl wakes up on a Monday morning with a zit on her forehead. Or gets heartburn. Or forgets to shave her legs. Do you really want her, in the name of being honest, to blog about that stuff? Maybe, but I say let her be good at what she is good at and share it with people who want to read it. 

Or how about those parents who inundate your facebook feed with pictures of their cute and perfect little angels? Do you really want to read a status a day complaining about no sleep, no spare time, funds getting tighter, and bratty screaming tantrums, just for the sake of transparency? Maybe, but I think we can just let them have their moment of cuteness in the midst of their chaos. 

Do you really want, in a sense of an egalitarian social media society, everyone to just air their dirty laundry out in public? Just to even the field? Just to prove that we all have parts of our lives that suck? Mmmmm, maybe not.

So what then, run away from it all and delete all of our accounts and adopt amishdom? Some of you brave cooler-than-me hipsters can do this, but I love the connectedness and joy that all of these good social media things bring. So only one option is left. I think the best thing you can do is to give thanks for everything. Be grateful that there are interesting, beautiful, and talented people in this world doing exciting, funny, and meaningful things with their lives, who, of all things that they could do with these wonderful things, want to SHARE it with YOU!

So go like that picture. Go favorite that tweet. Heck, go nuts and reblog a post you like. Share the encouragement, the beauty, the inspiration, the ingenuity, and the intelligence. Be happy for the cute kids, the hip lattes in local coffee shops, the intense fitness routines, the beautiful weddings, the huge engagement rings, and the cool apartments. Let people sort through their own dirty laundry themselves and just be thankful that there is a God who gives good things that people want to share. We all know that there is no such thing as a perfect life, so just be happy when there are parts of it that are wonderful and good and beautiful and pleasant. There is a God who brings us all of these things and is now bringing us together because of them.

So go scroll that newsfeed. And be thankful.

Links I Love

There's a blogger out there who is posing a challenge to other bloggers to post something every day in May along with a daily prompt to answer in each post. I'm definitely not going to post every day but I do find some of her prompts intriguing. The one for today is about sharing a blog that you love to read.

I'm going to go ahead and share more than one because I, if I'm being honest, read far more than just one regularly. So I'm going to go ahead and share five. (These don't include my daily dose of Kendi because hers is basically just a documentation of her daily outfit, which is wonderful, but I'm posting these links to appreciate those that actually write things from time to time instead of just posting beautiful pictures.) I love these blogs because they inspire me to be real, to be raw, and to be truthful when I write. To really dig deeper and get to the heart of things. I think becoming a better writer is also tied up in growing to become a better person. A more honest, aware, open, and reflective person. These girls do this on the regular and inspire me to do the same. You now know how nerdy I am with this internet machine on which I'm typing. Click around, read a few posts, and enjoy!

I feel this way exactly. 

1. The Wild and Wily Ways of a Brunette Bombshell. Okay. Although I wouldn't consider myself a "bombshell" per say, I am a brunette and feel that I share so so so many similarities to this blogger. Meg Fee is a girl in her twenties who moved to New York City about 8 years ago and writes about her struggles, friends, loves, and daily adventures. She is brutally honest. Sometimes so honest and raw about things that she goes through that I don't exhale the whole time I'm reading a post because my eyes are so glued to her emotions on the screen. I love that she is living an interesting life that she loves amidst really hard things and still comes out hopeful. She resonates so much with the reality I'm living out here in Chicago. I discovered her blog about a month ago and have visited it daily since then. The link will bring you to a page where she chose her favorite posts, so it will give you a good idea of her writing style and the aforementioned brutal honesty that makes her posts pop.

2. Fairytales Are True. This is written by Sarah Tucker, a new mom and really cool wedding planner lady. Her site is great for a quick bright outlook on life in the morning as you eat breakfast. I hope I'm something like her in about ten years.

3. Delightfully Tacky. I love this quirky style blog (plus other topics from time to time). She writes from the Pacific Northwest and makes me immediately want to move to Seattle or Portland and ride my bike through the woods. She's got this awesome head of big curly hair and thinks of the most interesting ways to put an outfit together, definitely embracing the kitschy vintage aesthetic. Beyond the outfits, her writing is really good too. She's a great source for style and life inspiration.

4. Casey Leigh. A beautiful mom with a beautiful family with beautiful style who writes beautiful words and posts beautiful pictures. It's the best way I can describe it. Go check it out.

5. Tales of Me and the Husband. I know it seems weird that I follow these married people's blogs. It's really more that I connect to their personalities and willingness to be open and the difference in our life stages doesn't really matter much to me. This girl's name is Bridget, and she has an interesting story with her family. She married into a family who had lost their mother and wife about 3 years prior, and she became a stepmom and a new wife at a really young age to a guy who was probably about 20 years older than her. It sounds crazy, and it is, but she has some really interesting points of view and really cool perspectives. She is honest about growing up quickly and honest about everything else. It's refreshing. It's cool that she is unapologetic about choosing her life path, yet is also the first to admit that there are complications and bumps in the road along the way.

Am I the only one who reads blogs all the time? Which ones do you like to read?

I've Been Tilley Faced!

I'm not sure if Tilley Faced is actually a verb or not, but whatever it is, I am very excited about it!

I have this friend named David Tilley. DT for short. I met him as a freshman when he was a junior and would always admire his fantastic graphic design goodness plastered all over Trinity's campus. I also was on the improv team with him for awhile and could not even take his hilarity. The guy is super tall, has a distinctive head of hair, and drives around a moped scooter (at least he did in college...maybe he's more grown up these days...I'll have to ask).

He is also quite the creative, and has his own entrepreneurial things going on. One of them is his company called Tilley Face, which is essentially a face illustration company. Needless to say, I was tickled pink when he showed me my very own Tilley Face for my blog header and whatever else I would use it for. I gotta say, he's got me pegged, all the way down to the eyebrow piercing, awk smile, and freckles. What do you think of the resemblance? I'm having a small geeky party over here in my apartment for this big new thing for my blog. I suggest you throw yourself a small party and click on his company's name above to see more of his work. Chewy happens to be my fave.

Thanks, DT!

Sister Sister

(Shout out to wonderful childhood television shows!)

Well. I've been HOLDING BACK on this one in SEVERE DIFFICULTY. 

There's something you should know about me. I love the social media. I've kind of been a Facebook freak since I first signed up during my junior year of high school. Pinterest ruled my life during finals week. I watch WAY too many videos on Youtube (this one happens to be my latest favorite). I'm still waiting on LinkedIn to magically find me employment after graduation. I joined Twitter a little over a year ago and nothing brings me joy quite like a long, well crafted hashtag.

#IfyoudontgetthatlaststatementIguessyoulljusthavetojointwittertoexperienceitonyourown.

Which also leads to the fact that I keep this thing that you're reading! Yes, a blog! So when something big happens, I immediately want to follow in the tradition of putting it out there to the world by means of thirty-seven different outlets! But I patiently waited for the green light to share this piece of exciting news:

My brother Alex is ENGAGED! To HEIDI! 

Which means I GET A NEW SISTER! 

Ahhhh. That felt good to proclaim. I had to chill out on the overshare to allow them to tell the good news themselves. I got the call last weekend at Taylor University (this is the down low on that weekend) in the middle of a Spanish cooking session. To describe the volume of my jubilation on hearing the news on a scale of pretty to very loud, I'd say it was VERY LOUD.

Aren't they cute?

Alex and Heidi met at Yale Law School (smarty pantses) and both will be working in D.C. this fall. I'd been bugging Alex in an appropriate little sister fashion to get a ring on that girl's finger for awhile now, but alas, he did things in perfect timing on his own, as he has done most of his life. I'm so excited for them and the future that is coming. And I'm also excited for myself because I've been a big fan of this Heidi character ever since she first started showing up in conversations around the house. It's not every day that you add a sibling to the fam!

There. I could finally say it. I feel so much better now.