Why I Stopped Posting About My Trip on Social Media

Some of you- Scratch that- Most of you probably don't know this: I just spent a month traveling the west coast.  I say most of you don't know this because unless you saw an exclamatory post about my purchase of the ticket, there wasn't much evidence online about my adventure.

A few days into the trip, I posted my first string of photos from Vancouver.  I sat in my Seattle residence, pleased as a kid drinking punch that the world was about to see how amazing the kick off of my trip was.

I posted this alone.  In a house I was sitting.  Alone.  Tucked in for the night.  My head buzzing.  My wallet not fat enough to take advantage of the night life.  Alone.

Many hours of my life have been - regrettably - dedicated to scrolling through my Facebook feed.  Coincidentally, many hours of my life have been dedicated to being miserable.  My adult jobs have pretty much always ranged somewhere between lackluster and sucking on some hard, demonic balls.  My romantic life has always ranged somewhere between nonexistent and disappointing.  And my goals and aspirations have floundered right around the "what a nice hobby you have, dumpling" realm.  Essentially, I'm a perfect candidate for Voyeuristic Toxic Shock Syndrome (VTSS).  You know, when you leave the tampon known as social media inside you for way, WAY too long.

It beats you down; staring at the fantastic lives of people you either hate, love, or kind of can't remember how you even met to begin with.  (The answer is: drunk.)  

"Hey, there's Chad swimming with sharks in Borneo.  Wow, that's cool."  

"AnneMarie's new job has a standing Friday night tradition of drinks atop the Wit once a month.  Man, that'd be so sweet."  

"Gloria and Terry just got engaged hiking Mt. Everest.  Hope they make it down.  But still, fuckin' rad, man."

The problem is, however, that no one is happy all the time.  No one is happy all the time.  Let me repeat that once more, NO ONE IS HAPPY ALL THE TIME.  However, most people project a life of happiness to their peers.  Aside from the high schoolers you have randomly befriended on Facebook (I did a community theater production of "Auntie Mame"! I swear! - Don't worry.  We get it), we are used to seeing the high earmarks of each others lives.  Long gone are the mopey Dashboard lyrics and intentionally vague "Wish it was yesterday...:(" posts (hopefully).

So I refused to allow my trip to contribute to VTSS.  Yes, I had an absolutely spectacular time.  And I encourage any and everyone to travel as much as humanly possible.  I also encourage any and everyone to travel alone at least once in their lives.  You will change.  Hopefully for the better.  Please don't come back a douche bag.  We need far less of those.

As I sat alone; lonely, I knew that there was no way to properly convey the lows of my trip - the only antidote for VTSS.  But there were lows.  You can't travel for a month by yourself with a constant smile on your face.  No one is a marshmallow Peep.

Here is a list of bummers I encountered on my trip (that I will get into more detail as I journal for your bemusement):

- Arriving far too early for my first sunset and growing more and more bored as I watched friends together on the beach.

- Getting locked out of the house I was housesitting.  And the ensuing panic attack.

- Walking for hours trying to get to this ONE BAR because I did this trip without wifi.  Ergo, without bus routes.

- Getting lost on a bike for hours with the final dregs of water in my belly and not my bottle.

- My plantar fasciitis kicking in as I realized my bus doesn't run past midnight and Portland is a black hole for cabs.

- Being alone when I've thought every thought I could possibly think.  Twice.

- The only day of rain for an entire month occurring while I camped.

- Not being able to shower for 3 days while still forcing myself to walk the streets of San Francisco in uncharacteristic 90 degree heat.  Uphill.  Always uphill.

- Feeling lonely.

- So. Many. Meals. Alone.

- Breaking the heart of someone I care deeply.

So yes, my trip was amazing.  And the good outweighs the bad.  But before I continue with this series, I felt it was important to inform you all about the depressing lows.  This trip wasn't some fantasy land to which I escaped for one month.  It was just an extension of life.  And life is going to suck a good portion of the time.

Because social media doesn't portray life.  It portrays the cinematic version of it.  The parts we want the world to see.  Edited to reflect a happier version of ourselves than we care to admit.

Please remember that the next time Erica and Frank post pictures of their dream wedding.  Yes, their wedding was a beautiful affair, and deserves to be celebrated.  But they are married now.  And how often are we going to see pictures of their financial woes when Frank gets let off?  Are they going to post pictures of their difficulties getting pregnant?  The affair that Erica had during the seven year itch?  The inevitable distance that grows between them as they realize they bypassed their hopes and dreams to follow a life suited for society instead of themselves?  I may be projecting with that last one.

The point is, I stopped posting pictures because I want to show them to friends and family with a personal explanation.  Not to inject it into the ether of the Internet for near strangers to interpret.  I resisted journaling in web form in lieu of journaling on paper.  On a coast.  Staring at the sunset over the Pacific Ocean.  Listening to Father John Misty.  I ignored Snapchatting airport and train station scenes with a neck pillow draped around me.  Because there's no story in that.  Simply a projection.  A projection that takes zero to little effort for me to post, yet can send an unsuspecting voyeur's world into turmoil.

So the next time you click that button that sends your thoughts into the vastness of cyberspace, think about what you are trying to say.  Why are you sharing this with people you'd probably pretend you didn't see if you saw them on the train?  What's your end game?  To boost yourself by attaining likes?  To show everyone how awesome your life is?  Because remember, someone may not be living the fantastic life you are living right now.  And likewise, you may not always be living your fantastic life.  So in the style of The Most Interesting Man in the World: Post responsibly, my friends.

*I will be continuing this series with a retrospective view of my trip in lieu of posting some day-to-day play-by-play with little creative pursuit.  Up next: Vancouver*

From a Bedroom Under a Hill

There's this common thought bubble in the zeitgeist that asks the question, "But Poppa.  How will I know when I'm in love?"  To which Poppa removes his corncob pipe from his grizzly bearded lips; the creases in his eyes smiling for his mouth, and states, "Oh, Mary Eloise.  You'll just know."

And there it is.  When you are in love, you'll simply know.  As if some kind of fairy sprinkles dust over your heartstrings, and you begin to sing in a meadow filled with birds and squirrels.  There's a reason this trope reappeared in 500 Days of Summer the morning after Joseph Gordon-Levitt sleeps with his dream girl.  Because when you are on the precipice between love and lust.  Infatuation and desire.  It feels, well, like something out of a Disney cartoon.  It's pure elation.

What is love?  Besides a pure, unadulterated '90s jam by the incomparable Haddaway.  I'm going to attempt to describe it through the ability of not being blinded by it.  By not being surrounded by it, but through its devastating absence.

It's going through the motions with a vibrancy that illuminates the smallest moment.  It's the slightest touch that reverberates through every cell in your body.  Like goosebumps that last for weeks.  It kills the numbness.  The stifling numbness you feel from the moment you wake up until the moment you stumble into bed.  It's not a necessity for life.  But it's a necessity to live.

To see the world from a new angle.  To challenge your perspective so you can progress.  So you can live anywhere but in the immediate.  It inspires and propels you.  Endows you vitality.  It strengthens your will.  It awakens your senses like a drug you can't seem to come down from.

Love won't conquer all.  It doesn't mean never having to say your sorry.  It isn't something you can wish for or beg for or plead for.  It simply opens your eyes to the rest of your life.  And it feels amazing.

So as Mary Eloise watches Sleeping Beauty for the seventh time this week, she turns to her father and asks, "How will I know when I'm in love, Poppa?"  He will smile down at his daughter, his calloused fingers mixing tenderly with his steely beard, "When the moments without that person no longer produce sound."

Me, Myself, and Now

I've been deceptively blessed.  You see, my parents have been living abroad off and on since I was in college.  Be it South America or Europe.  It has afforded me a beautiful chance to travel to see them.  Whenever I tell people that they live in London currently, there is a repetitive response: "Wow, that's so cool!  You are so lucky."  Yes, lucky to get to travel for holidays.  Lucky to see the world.  I don't deny this.  But what is the point of traveling?  Why do we love it so?

I recently returned from a belated Christmas sojourn to London and Barcelona.  A transformative visit, as I fell madly in love with the latter.  As I walked the gorgeous streets of Modernisma, I couldn't help but draw comparisons between Gaudi's romantic city of the past to Hannah's current city of the present.  Barcelona has a warf I liken to a less cloying version of Navy Pier.  A shopping district eerily similar to The Mag Mile.  A sense of being the latchkey kid city when far more popular vestiges reside so close.  It was Chicago with a different language, and a closer proximity to prawns.

Whenever I mark the end of these fantastic journeys I've had of late, there's an unmistakeable sense of inferiority upon my return.  I slip back into the motions.  I go back to work.  I eat my regular doldrum diet.  I wake up knowing exactly where I am without that moment of fear when my eyes open in an unrecognizable habitation.

But working in a Chicago tourist's wet dream of cuisine, I've realized something.  My city is just as exotic and fantastical as any other in the world.  So why do I feel empty when I return?

We have a problem.  As people.  We so very rarely allow ourselves to live in the moment.  Our lives are peppered with the unreal expectations of our future goals and plans, while simultaneously harping on the glory of our pasts.  For further proof, look at the abundance of nostalgic lists on websites devoted to the 90s.  A decade that when lived, felt like little more than the mundanity of getting from point A to point B.  But twenty years later, we look back with a fondness and an insatiable craving for yesteryear.  Yet it proved nothing more than life.

Why do we refuse to live in our present?  Because our present contains every waking moment.  We can't cut out the bull shit.  Where our past memories work as a filter, for the brain - regardless of its magnificence - can only hold so much.  And the future only contains the ideas we pray and hope for.  There are few people out there who look at their future goal of becoming famous and think about the days when work slows.  When the current love of their life starts growing distant.  When it's difficult to cook yourself the healthy alternative to ordering Chinese food off Grubhub and binge watching Breaking Bad because it's a little too difficult to manipulate yourself off the couch that Saturday.

The present can never be satisfying when we live so deeply in our past memories and our future hopes.  Even if there truly is beauty that surrounds the every day.  Because the present is only how it is because of the life we led.  And the future is only possible if we lay the building blocks in the now.  Just as I look at Barcelona as a future desirable inhabitance, it will one day become the norm.  And it will become boring.  Because the present is boring.  It contains every waking moment.  It doesn't have the allowance of editing.

Pretension is But a Pretense for the Ignorant

DAY WHATEVER: It Doesn't Matter, Because The Pauper is Dropping the Paup

As we go through life, the paths and goals we set out for ourselves ebb and flow as flippantly as the tides.  A year and some odd weeks ago, I set out to write a blog about the striking life decision I made to quit a job of unrest and pursue anew.  And as I venture further away from that decision, it becomes less a defining factor of my life, and just what it is.  A choice.

With that, I am making a choice about this blog.  It will no longer be a reflection of that change, but a space to put the proverbial pen to paper (or fingers to keys, as technology would have it.)

So instead of talking about some grand self discovery, I'm going to discuss a film.

Last night, after a not so long day at work, I came home to do some laundry at the non-peak hour of 11:00 p.m.  Instead of filling my time with sit-com reruns or inconsequential ambient television like Chopped, I decided to delve into the meat.  So I used the powers of the Internet to watch Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin.

The "plot" is simple (I used quotes because the plot would make a first year screenwriter's head spin.)  An alien seductress arrives in Glasgow with one mission: Harvest men.  For what?  It doesn't matter.  Because the film isn't about the alien's mission at all.  Only halfway through the film do we get a glimpse at any sort of plotted conflict.  The alien wants to know what it's like to be human.

Immediately after watching the film, my mouth hung open like a bass who had given its final breath.  Filled with scenes about the environment, focusing on moments where 2 + 2 = 5; it felt like an undertaking as a viewer.  An arduous task not meant for an Internet grown audience with the attention span of a gerbil on mescaline.

I needed to decompress.  Without a companion to discuss the film's merits, I needed to seek solace in the comment boards of strangers.  And what did I find?  A mixture of people praising its audacity combined with people disparaging it for its pretentiousness.

I remember the early stages of my humble cinephile beginnings.  She's a girl who saw The Matrix at 12 years old but didn't understand it until she was forced to write a paper on it in college.  She's a girl who claimed Memento was her favorite movie, but couldn't describe the plot to her father at his behest.  She's a girl who fastforwarded through 2001: A Space Odyssey's "Starchild" sequence.  She's a girl who said things were great, but secretly thought they were bull shit.

Being someone who has spent the better part of her twenties trying to reverse this frame of thought, I can understand the gripes that Under the Skin is pretentious.  It spends half its running time showcasing the alien's prowess at bringing men back to her home.  It fetishizes the Scottish coastal landscapes.  It leaves blank spaces for our minds to fill.

But it also creates some of the most beautiful imagery and disturbing sequences I have ever seen.  The harvesting of the men, the couple lost at sea, the disfigured man.  These are scenes of beauty, imagination, and intent.

We dismiss things we don't understand as pretentious, because we don't want to be excluded.  No one wants to miss the point.  So it's easy to brush off a complicated film as "art house bull shit."  It gives us a feeling of superiority when, in fact, we feel anything but.

I'm not dismissing viewer's claims of pretension as unwarranted.  Perhaps it is.  But by all means, give yourself the service of justifying your perspective.  Don't live in a world on the defense.

However, as a former abuser of this defense mechanism, I can tell you that I've been listening to the music from this film this entire post.  I've been running through images in my head as I type.  I've been fighting back tears of revelatory beauty as I struggle to find the right way to express how I feel about this film.  If that sounds pretentious, then maybe that's the world I want to live in.  A world where art affects me.  Sends a jolt down my spine.  A world where I push myself to care.

Give Up or Get Out

DAY FOUR HUNDRED AND TWENTY: The Pauper Fights Her Demons... Or At Least Acknowledges Them

It's Halloween.  The time of year for spooky specters.  The bewitching hour.  The time where beloved childhood icons can be sexy.

But [whore]ific costumes aside, Halloween is a time to be scared.  So what better day to acknowledge the lurking demon inside me?  Self-doubt.

I've taken a hiatus from writing of late.  Not for lack of thought.  I've started numerous blog posts and have deleted them.  Why?  Because I've gotten lost.  Lost at sea.  Lost in terror.  Lost in a grocery store where my mom has to summon a security guard to blast my name over the same intercom they use to price check grapefruits.

I'm lost in self-doubt.

How do you overcome it?  In an Internet Age where literally every thing gets over-analyzed and criticized, creatives are becoming a target on the same page as Hitler or John Mulaney's disappointing new show.

When information is at our every fingertip, earbud, and sightline, every single person with some kind of gadget has free reign over their opinions echoing over space and time.  And it instills doubt.  Copious amounts of it.

How do you overcome it?

Every choice I seem to make in my writing endeavors comes fully equipped with an endless amount of uncertainty.  Sure, validation comes, but it never dulls the hot pain of that screaming incubus of self-doubt.

I don't know how to overcome it.

There are people who are talented and succeed tremendously.  And then there are talented people who languish.  There are untalented people who succeed.  And then there are untalented people who succumb to the drudgery of life.  Of course they do.  How else does the circle of life foster?

As time goes on, I find myself pulling away from society.  Pulling away from professing my feelings because they seem trite.  Pulling away from people I care about because disappointment lurks in every corridor.

I'm not sure this can be overcome easily.

So when you go to your parties and haunted houses this Hallow's Eve, maybe you shouldn't be so scared of goblins and vampires and visions of childhood innocence being grotesquely violated.  Because there's nothing scarier than the voice inside your head that tells you to stop.

Cool. Cool cool cool.

DAY THREE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-SIX: The Pauper Gets David Caruso-Style Cool

Everybody wants to be cool.  Why not?  Even if you turn to gothic or punk rebellion, don't you do it to fit a new definition of the idea?  Nobody wants to reject the norm simply to have the ab-norm reject them.

But what is cool?  Obviously, there is no answer to this.  It's however you choose to perceive it.  But when information is limitlessly at your fingertips, eye sockets, and ear and nose holes, "what is cool" is constantly being blasted at you.

Take for instance the recent rise of The Ice Bucket Challenge.  It began as an idea to raise awareness for a disease that receives very little funding.  It gains speed on social media.  Begins popping up in your numerous feeds.  "Oh hey, what is that?  That's kind of interesting."

A once inoffensive idea in moderation, The Ice Bucket Challenge blew up astronomically.  My eye, ear, nose, and butt holes could hardly accomplish a thing without being inundated with a new video or article about The Challenge.

Suddenly, the meteoric rise to superstardom turned The Ice Bucket Challenge into something to rebel against.  It garnered too much popularity.  Regardless of the cause, it became a fad.  And fads - like the name Merv - aren't cool.

Enter backlash.  Too many people like something, which means I must dislike it.  It's a guttural instinct for many.  It's - admittedly - a guttural instinct for this author.  Like Katy Perry, velour tracksuits, Twitter, the "cinematic canon of Sir Michael Bay"; I choose to reject what's popular.

But where does backlash come from?  Why do we feel compelled to hate so many things simply because they are popular?  I once dated a guy who told me he started to dislike Arrested Development when it found its resurgence on DVD.  Because it wasn't "his own" and it was now popular.  The show didn't change (this is pre-Netflix era resurgence.)  But the show's constituents did.  Although the quality remains, the sheer fact that it becomes socially acceptable makes something revolting.

But the truth is, Katy Perry songs are catchy, velour tracksuits are comfy, Twitter can hone your wit like nothing else, and Michael Bay movies are...

Okay, so I can't defend everything.  I'm only one woman.

As for The Ice Bucket Challenge?  Its merits are obvious.  And after the backlash, the inevitable backlash to the backlash rears its face.  And suddenly (take a deep, satisfying breath of relief), it's cool to like The Ice Bucket Challenge again.  And we all start to remember why the whole thing started.

And now, just a few short weeks after its zenith, there are no more pictures.  No more videos.  No more backlash.  The fervor has settled, and the memory of it will fade.  Until Chad shows up at the Halloween party next month dressed in an ice bucket that he didn't fully think through.  But when you spot Chad across the room, cracking a joke about pumpkin spice lattes, what will you think? Is Chad's costume cool?  Or is it lame?

Connect Four!

DAY THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FIVE: The Pauper Re-Evaluates the Essentials

If you died tomorrow, where would you define yourself?

It's a heavy thought, but as someone constantly floating through life searching for an answer to "why?", I think about this often.  Do we leave our mark on others?  Did others leave their mark on us?  Unless you were some kind of latchkey kid who never grew out of it, our lives are constantly echoed by the voices around us.

Relationships.  A bond between one individual and another.  Be it familial, friendship, romantic, or nemesis; our lives are constantly being molded by the people around us.

Last year, a friend posed the question to me; "If scoring the soundtrack of the movie of your first 25 years on the planet, what 4 to 5 songs capture the essence of your core periods?"  I opted for a full soundtrack in lieu of 4 to 5 songs.  My response was an amalgamation of intrepid battles with the opposite sex.  Songs ranging from an electro-pop declaration of loneliness to a meditation on unrequited love.  From a song dedicated to asking my crush to prom to a scene I've always wanted to write into a movie with a woman ridiculously bawling over a recently lost love.  There was a common link that my friend pointed out: Most of my songs revolved around the wounds bestowed upon me by the opposite sex.

It was a jolt.  The kind of jolt you always knew was lurking behind some lurid corner, but never noticed until someone pointed it out.  Like the smell of last night's booze on your breath as you walk into church.  So one question remained: Why did I place so much emphasis on spoiled goods?

As someone no longer self-conscious over the fact that she's never had a relationship, I have niente qualms about admitting all of my past loves have been unrequited.  And yet, I still defined myself by people who couldn't see the beauty I can see in myself.  Why?  Is it some kind of twisted low self-esteem logic buried deep within the teenager that never left?  Fabricated obsession?  A medieval torture device?

Because the thing is, I have had some amazing relationships in my life.  When I was ostracized for suicidal tendencies at age 14, one brave friend confided her personal travails so I didn't feel so alone.  I spent the past three and a half years living with a boy I befriended at age 15 when we both whole-heartedly believed we would be superstars by the age of 21.  I found my confidence in a girl I admired for years before we eventually studied abroad together.  I've had a mentor at work who taught me how to stand up for myself in the face of ugliness.  I've met partners who have nurtured my creativity.  And, oh yes, I met some guys who treated me like shit.  And yet, they are the ones whom I allowed to define my soundtrack.

There is so much beauty to be found in every single relationship we happen upon.  It's such a shame that the pop culture machine breeds [women] to believe the romantic relationships should dictate their lives.  I've spent countless nights sitting on a friends' porches, bearing my soul.  My dreams, my fears, my regrets, my shames, my past, my hopes, my embarrassing bowel movements.  My everythings.  Why do we not cherish these relationships the same way we do with the ones that turn so sour?

I pose this thought because I wonder if it's how the populous feels.  Because the media would lead us to believe so.  I spent some time watching trailers for upcoming cinematic features.  Anything with a female lead inevitably featured a woman toiling over her romantic woes.  Do women genuinely obsess about romance this much?  Or do we obsess about it because we've been programmed to believe it's our lot in life?

You know what I want to see?  More than anything.  I want to see a world where femme-centric films no longer center around the fallacy that women's relationships need to be defined by whom they are fucking.  Because as a woman who spent too much unsatisfying time doing said activity, I can tell the young girls of today the truth.

Relationship: The way in which two or more concepts, objects, or people are connected, or the state of being connected.

Relationships will always define who we are.  Because the interactions we have in life will invariably affect the actions we take next.  But make no mistake; romantic relationships will define about 5% of the person you become (Scientific fact... Ish.)  As a woman who has very limited experience in relationships of the romantic persuasion, I can promise you that life continues to astound me.  The people I encounter and share my life with, well, those are the people who remind me to wake up in the morning.  That life can still amaze me.  And when two people meet and connect on a level that defies odds, well, that's what I live for.