No Matter What You See Others Doing On Facebook, I Promise You Are Doing Better Than You Think You Are

Facebook is the enemy. But she’s like a blonde girl with pretty hair, who takes really nice Instagram photos and has Hunter boots, so you always find yourself staring at her. C’est la vie.

Seriously though, if we are being honest, and we are – about 2/3 of my Facebook friends list is filled with people from high school that I didn’t like then, and I like even less now. BUT, I need to know what they are doing with their lives. I need to keep up to date with the hot gossip! Like who’s on their fourth child, and who got arrested again. You know, small town gossip that everybody loves – I really do; it’s sickening.

But, here is the deal. I need to stop. This weird obsession with everyone else’s lives is unhealthy, and I’m going to tell you why.

Nobody has it all figured out. Natalie still tells guys she loves them after texting for a few weeks, Rachel is planning to marry her high school sweetheart that is still mooching off of her, and me? Well I’ve got a super long cheek hair that pops up every now and again, and I feel a little bit like a German Santa Claus for a little while until I realize it’s there and remove it. Yeah, I’m as glamorous as it gets, folks.

As a blogger, I get a lot of followers that seem to think I’m living a luxurious and awesome life. Even those friends I still have on Facebook from high school have contacted me and told me how cool my blog is, and they suddenly want to know what I’m doing with my life. In high school I’m pretty sure you thought my name was Bridget, but yes… By all means, I welcome you into my weird little life, because now you think I’m cool.

Here’s the reality:

I owe the Canadian government $45,000 because I spent 2 years in a tree-hugging program telling myself I was going to save the world, then realized that was ridiculous, worked for a year at an even more ridiculous job, and then returned to school where I discovered I really like to write. So, here we are. I’m not cool, I’m slightly deranged. But don’t get it twisted, I am still glamorous.

I have Facebook friends who are posting photos of their newborn babies.

I have Facebook friends who are posting photos of their engagement rings.

I have Facebook friends who are deciding to go back to school, drop out, are graduating, and who are struggling to balance their social (drinking) lives with their education.

My point is we are all somewhere, doing something. We don’t share the dark and embarrassing parts of our lives, because we want those high school Facebook friends to think they don’t exist. We choose to create an online profile that isn’t true to our real lives, and that’s absolutely reasonable, but we need to realize that everyone else is doing the same thing.

Don’t compare your chapter 5 to someone else’s chapter 10.

We are all at different stages in our lives, and sometimes we need to go back and reread chapters, rip some out, rewrite, take a little longer to finish — and sometimes pause completely. There isn’t a formula for life. We’re doing it blindly, with the help of our Facebook friends.