A few months ago, a friend said to me “Instagram/Blogging Shannon is so different than the real Shannon”. For a split second, I got defensive. Sure, I wore leggings, rarely washed my hair and went without makeup most days but obviously I wasn’t going to post about that on my Instagram?! My feed was supposed to be beautiful & put together. I didn’t want to share about my struggles with weight gain or the challenges I was facing in my academic life. Plus, I thought that no one would want to open their app to see and hear about my stresses and challenges. How would I compete with the thousands of other bloggers who were posting gorgeous outfit photos and put-together brunches? Then, it hit me. My online presence had become so different than who I really was that I started to question who I was and what I believed in.
Why did I feel the need to hide my struggles, my weight gain, my hardships? Why did I feel the need to make my online presence so put together while I felt like my life was, in some ways, falling apart.
The truth is, when I started this blog, I had no idea that it would grow to tens of thousands of readers every month. In the last year, the growth I have seen has been explosive and I am SO appreciative of that. However, the bigger I grew, the more I wanted to shy away. I have became a more private and vulnerable person. I wanted to protect myself from any type of negative criticism that I thought would hurt me. So I curated my feed, sharing the best and the brightest moments. Those moments were real but they didn’t show the behind the scenes. They made my imperfect, messy life look perfect–something that I never want to promote.
I did some serious soul searching as to why I was showing this life that was not truly the life I was living. Apart from desire to keep parts of my life private, I also was embarrassed. Because of the weight gain, I wasn’t happy with the way I looked or felt. I had my worst academic semester of college and I decided that my major wasn’t really where my passions lie. I needed a restart and a refresh. More importantly, I needed to be reminded of who I really was.
Since taking time off and focusing on myself, my health and my relationships, I finally feel like I know what my purpose is with this blog and how I will show that to my readers.
Thanks for reading and remember, no matter what you are going through, there is someone out there that has been through it before and that is what I hope to show you through my blog.
