BURN OUT

Credits: Nicole Lim @ jesuistigerlily

It has been one month since my last post. To be honest, this year has been hectic. Everything started to happen one after another with no breaks in between. Not that I’m complaining because everything has been good for my growth both physically and mentally. Somehow, my busy schedule has been getting in the way of my writing. It’s funny because I use this space as my escape but in the last few months, I’ve been using sleep instead.

I don’t quite know where to begin but I’ll start with this – I am feeling extremely burned out. There was a part of me that wanted this website thing to really take off. And in the meantime, I was trying to curate my Instagram feed with pretty pictures. Only I have none because I’ve not done a fashion shoot in almost a year. There is no inspiration; no muse. I’ve been dragging my posts from Seoul over so many months and I’m not even half done. It’s like I lost my spark and joy. And for the first time, I really don’t feel like writing anything anymore. Every post became a chore and my words no longer hold that life it once did.

That’s what the world does to you though. Because social media has become such an important necessity thing in life, you start comparing and without realising, everything you do starts to revolve around what others think or do. As much as I hate to admit it, I did care about how many followers I have on Instagram. I use hashtags like a manic person. I would constantly check my website analytics after each new post to see if anyone is reading. It’s so stupid. What happened to writing simply because I loved to? What happened to the simplicity and innocence of life? What happened to not caring about what people think or say or do?

At the end of the day, all of it doesn’t even matter.

Nobody should ever have to feel like they are defined by a number or the amount of ‘likes’ they receive for a picture that no one will remember in two minutes. Statistics shouldn’t determine your characteristics as a person. And after all that struggle, I’ve made my peace. May has been a month of travel, a month of reflection and a month of trying to not put a camera in front of every damn thing I see. While I still brought my camera out with me, I tried to just live in the moment. But it needs to be more intentional.

It’s about putting my phone away when I’m in the company of others. And I don’t mean on the table – it is about chucking it away in my bag or stuffing it in my pocket. It’s about writing when I want, about what I want, whenever I want. It’s about posting a picture on Instagram simply because I want to; not because I want my feed to look like Picasso’s wall. It’s about being interested in life, taking in the moments rather than trying to capture every single thing to display for all to see. It’s about not caring about what others think all the time.

Life does not always have to be so complicated. And since I stated earlier that I no longer have inspiration nor a muse to write, I’ve decided that life shall be my inspiration and muse. It’s all too beautiful a gift to ignore, no?

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