snap back to reality

the world is on fire. believe it or not though, there's a way we can make it out of all of this without losing our minds. and it starts with honesty. over the past month, i have been taking this online course from yale that is about how we can rewire our lives to get more happiness every day. taking this class made me stop and think about the toxicity in society. i'm about to break down the mental fuzz; hopefully we can all find a little more joy. we sure as hell need it.

let's start with the obvious: social media. obviously, there are many benefits to being online. we can connect w people we haven't seen in awhile, read about current news, learn about local events. today it's good for getting the message out reeeeal fast. but really, who has 500+ friends they can rattle off the top of their head. if you have to subscribe to their camera roll in order to remember them, are they really your friend? if you haven't talked in more than a year, are you really gonna call them up soon? we can use social media to benefit us, but it really has to be intentional. then there's the trend of trying to be more real on social media, but it's pretty much impossible. even if you don't use a literal filter over your photos to make that aesthetic just right, you're still mentally filtering what you are posting. let's be real. you probably don't dress nice every day, you probably don't spend most of your day outside (if you did you wouldn't post it), and your posts are still more/less a highlight reel. while staying positive can be great, it can still have some side effects. you know what your feed is in relation to your life, but when you see the same of others sometimes our silly brains just assume that the other person is always slayin. recently, i've been reevaluating what i've shared on social media. in retrospect, a lot of the things i posted were in really dark times of my life. in the moment, those we just slivers of light. i can imagine another person seeing my photos or reading about my experience and picturing how perfect my life must have been. it breaks my heart to think that someone would compare their life with mine. we really don't know what deep trenches people had to cross to get where they are.

if we could see the whole picture, we could see how much people struggle just like us.

obviously, that's not what social media is about. it's about the highlights, it's about sharing positivity, it's about trying to bring good in a real world that we know as being kind of shitty sometimes. if we were honest -- if you could see the times i've failed though. it sucks that once we share our success, people expect that we have it all together. if i included all the times i was rejected, when i tried something new and it fell apart, my resume would be a whole lot longer.

a couple weeks ago, i got my reviews back from being a teaching assistant, and with that i reflected on my semester as a TA. quick rant: the chemistry department at the university may very well be the worst place to work on campus. not only were the professors prideful, insensitive/just straight up rude, and pessimistic.. students were anxious, angry, and super entitled. while i love teaching, and many of my co-TAs and students were kind, i would never work there again, because of the toxic environment that was present throughout most of it. i never thought i was the most experienced person with chemistry, but i knew when i started that i knew enough and worked hard enough that i would be able to teach. while most of my reviews were positive, there was one student in particularly who obviously hated my guts and lowkey attacked me as a person in the reviews. i laughed it off, because i know who i am. but that review reminded me of how social media can be toxic too. there will always be that person who just doesn't like you for no real reason and we can be resilient, we can try to not offend people, we can be nicer, but at the end of the day there will always be someone like them. and maybe if you sat down and had a real life chat with them, they would understand why you are the way you are even if that ticks them off.

the real conversations hold our key to real connection, and nothing can replace real talk. let's talk more. not just crap about other people, but about what makes us us, what makes life worth it. let's have real conversations that last longer than 60 seconds. i'll never be able to go back and change my first impression or reverse the hours i have spent engaging in the meaningless interactions of social media. however, we can all be more intentional in meaningful communication, we can all unplug a little more. we can be less judgemental and get to know people and their stories. that's the realest part of life.