Photo Week #21 (not really a Photo Week post)

Hi! Happy June! I don’t know how you’re feeling, but this has been an intense week. It’s been an intense last few months, but it really seemed to boil over this past week. I cried twice this past week, which is a lot for me – although, to be honest, I am a more emotional person than I’d like to believe, and I probably cry the normal amount of times a person should (or could) cry. A lot of my angst stems from personal matters – specifically, job and body image – and I want to be truthful and say that it wasn’t until the end of this week that I felt angst over the murder of George Floyd (and Ahmaud Arbery. And Breonna Taylor. And more.) I don’t pretend to be a social justice minded person (or Christian) and it felt disingenuous to me to repost things on social media to “not stay silent” and “not be complicit” because it felt like an empty gesture for me. I’ve talked about this before – how I don’t believe that social media silence equates to real world silence, but again, I’m not sure if that is an excuse for myself. As a semi-professional social media lurker I rarely use those platforms to express myself. I guess I do use Twitter to say things I think might be funny… for the most part, I consider myself to be quiet on social media.

So a primary portion of my personal discomfort was due to the fact that I didn’t know how to process the feelings that social media was making me feel. Wow, what a sentence and a lot to unpack there. I know in general I am not good at processing my feelings. It takes me a lot longer than I believe a normal person would take to figure out how I feel about things and then what to do about them. Ideally I would like the end result of processing my feelings to be action.

I felt like there needed to be some urgency to the feelings processing because I felt like I was being left behind in people calling for action – people who I hope are also doing their part in donating and signing petitions and et cetera. I will try not to judge and say that these are also people who are being disingenuous, because probably my fear of reposting things stems from my fear that people will judge me for only showing lip service, right? Right.

Maybe slowing down to consider my feelings is not such a bad thing, if it can produce lasting change in myself. Changing my mindset is one thing I have more control over and it’s a good place to start. Things I am also trying to do: be more mindful of my own biases and gut reactions. Committing to read more nonfiction books and articles about systemic racism to broaden my horizons and open my eyes and ears. Not be afraid to talk about what’s happening with friends (this is hard for me, no matter the topic. I think it starts with a fear of ignorance, but there are friends who I can admit my ignorance to and whom I can learn from). Donating. Praying.

This post was all about me, but this whole blog is about me and what I do so I don’t feel too badly about it, haha. In other news (because I want to remember this and because I need to believe that joy and light can exist in life alongside anger and sorrow) we had a drive-in movie birthday party last week and it was more delightful than I could have imagined. I didn’t realize how good it could be to see friends again and how funny The Princess Diaries is.