Winter is not coming, it is in full swing, and I love it. Putting on 5 layers of clothing every single morning (thermal shirt, wool turtleneck, tight sweater, big sweater, coat) is just one of the few pleasures of the most wonderful time of the year.
While I love Winter more than anything else, I still get the January blues every now and then. However, this year is different. Instead of convincing myself I really am living my best life watching tv shows on the living room couch, I have been putting myself out there. Quite a daunting task!
It feels like I'm putting myself in one of the most vulnerable positions imaginable and firmly occupying that spot without leaving. It includes crippling insecurities. It feels like you're constantly torn between who you are and who you want to be, and I guess that those versions of yourself are not that far apart after all.
As I wrote in my diary a few weeks ago, I have been loving. Perhaps not in the traditional, romantic sense of the word, but in a more abstract way. A sense of love that is detached from basic happiness or sadness and prefers to be a feeling of its own. Love for writing, love for my surroundings, love for what I stand for. Whereas January felt like an incoherent sequence of emotions, events and emotional events, it seems to be falling into place this month.
In the end, I would rather regret feeling too much than feeling too little, so here I am trying to make sense of my feelings to you. I feel like I stopped being as personal as I used to be on this blog somewhere along the way and got lost in trying to make this blog as lighthearted, silly and humble as possible. In my constant fear of coming over as pretentious, part of my authenticity got lost. I found myself constantly asking myself the same question for the past few months: am I doing this because it makes me feel good or because the positive affirmation of others makes me feel good? It's easy to assume that nobody will like what you do, whether that relates to your haircut or passions or anything else you get to decide over. You can't feel disappointed when you didn't expect a positive reaction in the first place. However, holding myself back from sharing my passions has done nothing for me. I got so carried away in trying to be an independent individual that I forgot what I really wanted. All of this has had an impact on my blog in terms of how I wanted to present myself to the world. Fortunately, the time has come to clear things up and be the most open and authentic version of myself again.
So where do I begin?
I finished exams, had a great Christmas break, got my wisdom teeth removed and spent a week on my couch in a daze of painkillers, met new people and reconnected with people I already knew, went to parties, threw parties, dyed my hair, went to climate protests, went to concerts, celebrated my 17th birthday with the people I love most in the world, had major mood swings, developed a caffeine addiction, slept too little, made a lot of late night gifs in photoshop, felt insecure, allowed myself to feel insecure without thinking I'm weak, finished two journals even though my writing is crap, moved into my sister's old room, and had a lot of other experiences that are too meaningful to just loosely mention on this blog.
So I guess this is it. I'm not sure what to use this platform for anymore and I'm still trying to figure things out. I started this blog to fangirl about clothes, and it quickly turned into a documentation of my teenage years and ongoing concerns, from existential crises to buzz cuts to feeling pressured because of my Instagram. I feel like I've outgrown this blog, but I'm not ready yet to leave this part of me behind. Documenting my life on here has made me more ambitious, more passionate, more determined to do what I love more than anything; writing. In the end, I could've chosen any way to capture my surroundings: film, photography, painting or music. However, writing has stuck and I hope one day I can make it into my career, despite feeling like my writing (and as a result myself) sucks.
This is not a goodbye, but not a 'welcome back' either. I will see you again once I've figured out what to do with this blog.
Love,
Cato
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