I had started my day at 6:30 that morning, had driven for two hours stuck in morning rush hour traffic, and then immediately rushed to class. I had a 15 minute break to wolf down some snacks lacking in nutritional value, went back to class, and then I was on my way to the library to study. Around 8pm, I walked back to my car and started to drive home. It was torrential down-pour, and somehow, I was still stuck in traffic.
In the past, this would have made for an absolutely and wholly terrible day. I would have complained that I had been up for more than 12 hours talking to people. I would have felt incredibly bitter over the fact that I had to sit in traffic not once, but twice. And the rain… don’t even get me started on the rain. However, I left school that day feeling happy; that bitterness was lost on me. What had changed from the past to now? I had started romanticizing my life.
Romanticizing my life had started off as a joke I had with myself at the beginning of the year. In my somewhat cynical and rather realist nature, romanticizing my life sounded “cheesy.” I had had a rough year the year prior and appreciating the little things seemed trivial. Why worry about the little things when there are so many big things I have on my plate right now? I thought. My idea of romanticizing life also seemed out-of-reach. I had thought that romanticizing your life looked like what movies showed, and certainly that was unattainable. To couple Hollywood’s unattainability, social media sat right at my finger tips. How could I possibly romanticize my life when I can open my phone and instantly see people experiencing things that are out-of-reach and living in a more aesthetically pleasing way?
So, pettily, I started documenting my little things. I took pictures here and there as a way to self-document simple things I was doing. They didn’t look like Hollywood movies and they didn’t look like my peers on social media, but it was a start. Eventually, I started to enjoy these documentations of the little things. A sweet treat one day, lighting my favorite candle the next. They all started to add up. Eventually, what had started as satirical to me, had turned into my reality; as I changed, the world around me changed too.
I began to embrace the fact that technology, quite often paired with social media, is unavoidable. The fact of the matter is that I have been and will continue to grow up in the age of technology. With that comes the incredible pressures of social media. However, if I put all of that aside, the pressures of looking good, and feeling it too; the pressures of posting the best pictures, all of the time, and feeling validated through likes, comments, and follows to go along with it; and the pressures of achieving at the same rate if not quicker than my peers, then I could find peace. Finding this peace didn’t mean I had to hate social media or completely isolate myself from it. Instead, I could find congruity between my socials and the little things in life that had started bringing more and more joy the more often I acknowledged them. I began to post my self-documentation of those once trivial things, not for proof that I was doing well and for others to notice, but for myself to recognize that, “Hey, I really did that!” Now, looking at social media, I no longer feel those pressures that I once felt. Rather, I can open it up and see the proof that the little things that bring you joy matter just as much as those big things. Additionally, I don’t have to shy away from technology as a whole because those Hollywood movies show enjoyment, more often than not, in a situation without a phone.
When I got in my car at the end of that day, I was proud of myself. Because not only did I go to all my classes, but I ate a snack too. And I went the extra mile when I stayed later to study, and that was something to celebrate. And although it was raining and I was stuck in traffic, it wasn’t the worst rain I had ever driven in and the traffic gave me time to slow down and enjoy my music. Life doesn’t have to move so fast all the time. I had documented my little things for that day too, one because they made me smile, and two because it was proof that I can find a little things each day to romanticize.