Finding Balance in a World of Perfectly Curated Lives

I find it fascinating that in this age, we get to see how others live their life. Though it’s not the big picture of their life, you could peek at their picture perfect life from many shared on social media. While I was growing up, I don’t think people around me were that obsessed about showing and flaunting their daily life. Life was much more mysterious and closed but now, we somehow take strangers peeking into one of the most intimate moments in our life. As much as I find that concept rather disturbing but the pretty pictures and aesthetic of this content still lures me to peek and sometimes tempt me to share these. Maybe this is the year when I’ll stop checking them out as I often feel bad knowing that my daily routine is pretty mediocre. I certainly work out and I am pretty strict about it but what makes it different is that I don’t wake up from a nice house or a penthouse. These comparisons used to bother me up until now, I realized that I am pretty fine as a person. I don’t think anything is wrong but there’s only room for improvements to my daily habit so that I become a better person than yesterday or my past self.

My obsession over that kind of content has quite an advantage and disadvantage. It all boils down to how I start seeing it over time when I start having envy and turning into a motivational approach. When I saw people have aesthetic set up, I used to wonder, why can’t I be like them? But as I grow older, I just see it as a motivation that I can live my life without having to filter anything. I suppose, I just get more comfortable being myself more than I used to. I began to love the kind of aesthetic that I have. I think by embracing our self and its quirkiness that is also what separates us from others —It is what makes us unique and human. However, the disadvantage of it would be the time I spent on nurturing the jealousy in me that sort of wastes time. In any way, envy isn’t great and it only consumes us when it’s not controlled. I suppose, my hypercompetitive self thrives in comparison but it’s something that has changed. I do not let envy dictate what I do anymore nor the comparison that anyone put on me. I do what I have to do and what I want to do.

However, these daily content can be pretty motivational too as I get to see certain people do their job and activity. I am also mostly checking out the people that have the job I wanted or the people with the same job. Some of you might think that daily routines are mundane but these creators can make mundane things into something aesthetic and pique people’s interest. That just speaks to the volume that great things sometimes come from anything mundane. Just like I learned that stone can be invaluable but when it is shaped in a certain way, repackaged, and rebranded, it would have even more value.

At the same time, I noticed that these days I am also disinterested in checking instagram, tiktok, and even anything hip that everyone is up to. Although for trend research purposes, once in a blue moon I would hop on these and check out what everyone's buzzing about. Years ago, I would get into these apps almost daily and realize how shit my life is, whereas it’s actually not bad at all. After a while of not being on instagram, just yesterday for example, I saw a girl posting about quitting corporate life, 9-5 in the US and choosing to move to the rural side and work at a coffee shop as she finds it exhausting and wanting some novelty after depression and break up. The comment section was pretty horrendous. It all ranges from “ privileged”, “ having a sugar daddy”, and that she should not even share it. Maybe she kinda does and maybe she doesn’t. The comments were also mentioning how she could live with low wages and that responsibility may catch up to her sooner. I suppose since even $3000 isn’t enough to live in some states in the US lately, I can imagine these people outrage. But maybe she has parents and she’s OK living with them. Since on the side, she’s doing social media, I am sure she’s making from it too as side income, so I don’t think that’s bad at all. I find that people find it odd when someone is resenting 9-5 and has their own way to make a living. Inherently, these days web2 is filled with outrage and cancellation that it’s not worth the time to even check there. It has become even more toxic than I remembered. That is also why I don’t spend much time on it anymore. I am perhaps being biased on my judgment but these days I just check youtube, reddit, and well, 4chan on the side and some small tech forums. I don’t take reddit and 4 chan seriously but it’s pretty nice to channel my inner troll once in a while. At the same time, I don’t really have strategies to limit everything. I just make sure that my life is filled with boundless activity that keeps me from being bored because boredom means time for checking out the thing that would only fill my brain with less important information.

Well again, social media isn’t everything. Whatever you see online may not be everything even more these days. As a late zoomer, we can’t help but grow up among these and some of us learned a little too late that we have to be kind even to ourselves and everything we see could only be the surface. Even for me, I was late to it and only in recent years, I learned that the world is full of curated lives. My important lesson is that whenever my life doesn’t go the way it is planned, never go on social media that thrives on comparison.