I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: autumn beach excursions are indisputably superior to summer ones. I will not be taking any questions at this time, but thank you for coming to my (very brief) TedTalk.
As per usual, I’m writing about a travel experience way after the fact. However, it’s not anything I haven’t written about before, merely a slightly different perspective in photographic aesthetic owing to the fact that I traveled to the beach a week or so earlier than previous years.
With that being said, I’ll use this time as an opportunity to lament my lack of consistency in writing here or anywhere. I actually began prepping this post the day after I returned home from the beach at the beginning of November, but as I am wont to do, I allowed life to continuously distract me from ever finishing and publishing the post. I say “allow” because there were numerous instances in which I thought about returning to my blog and simply shrugged it off.
I don’t know if you know this, but personal blogging isn’t exactly trendy anymore. I know this and have known it for years, but despite the fact that not many people participate in this creative medium anymore, I can’t help but feel that it most resonates with me more than, say, TikTok. While I do peruse TikTok (an undeniably trendy platform) on occasion, it’s just not the place where I feel most comfortable expressing myself. I’m too self-conscious about my entire existence to feel comfortable in front of a camera for one thing.
I do try to make an effort every now and again, but I will probably always feel too uncool for a place like TikTok. There’s also the fact that as the years creep by I find myself giving less and less of a shit about social media on the whole.
While my younger self would’ve found my current relationship with social media perplexing, I think millennial burnout online is probably fairly common right now. We’re old enough to remember what the experience was like when social media first hit the scene which is why using today’s monetized mutation of it is disheartening and, quite frankly, uninteresting.
Am I the only one who’s bored with it? Or have I just gotten that old (re: aforementioned phrase “hit the scene”)? Or maybe it’s that social media isn’t made for me anymore and now I’m crabby about it?
At any rate, my blog maintains a presence in my life that is at once distant yet comforting. (So, very much like a beach vacation. I may not live there but it represents an inspiring and welcoming space.)
I would love to be more present on my blog but writing has not been a priority for me lately. There are reasons—some of them good, some of them not. Truthfully, there’s just a lot fighting for my attention right now and when I have some to spare I find myself wanting to give it to something mindless, like TV or Animal Crossing. I haven’t even been a good reader this year, so my writing life has been almost nonexistent.
The lovely thing about the ending of one year, however, is that the beginning of another offers us a chance to reset ourselves. I’ve been in denial about outgrowing my identity as a writer; or, if “writer” is too ambitious of a label given the amount of time I actually spend writing, then perhaps “creative” or “writerly type person” will suffice.
I’ve been considering lately the rate at which I’ve changed in the last few years. Not even since the pandemic but its aftermath. There were the dregs of it in which I created this blog and still possessed remnants of my pre-pandemic creative ambition. I started writing a book, which I haven’t touched in I don’t know how long. I even started writing poetry more frequently, which I almost never indulge myself in because I’ve been so horrible at it in the past. But after I lost my job earlier this year and was fortunate enough to reclaim my position with my former employer, I sort of threw myself into that role again out of extreme gratitude and didn’t leave much left over for anything else.
So, as we enter a new year in the coming days, I can only hope (because I’m not much of a goal-oriented person) that I give myself grace and allowance to revisit myself as a “writer,” “creative,” or “writerly type person.” I hope that I resolve my love for reading and spend more time turning the pages of a book than doomscrolling. I hope I find more opportunities to travel and experience life outside again. I hope I become a little less comfortable with my comfort zone (but only a little) and I hope I find better, more literary ways to express myself than by shutting down and pretending my feelings don’t exist.
Until next time…
xLMB
Lauren Michelle Brock 