cigs, good conversations and being in a bikini... what more could a girl want?

Grappling with a period of depression makes you analyze what matters. As someone who's good at getting myself out of ruts, I always come back to the same things: moving my body, being creative, and good human connection. It's hard to find those things in an age where consumption is the norm, and often I get so swept up in the feed that I forget myself. Digital chatter is so loud that it's easy to consume everything everybody else is doing until it replaces anything you might think to do yourself.

I watch other people going after their dreams as a placeholder for going after my own, because online you always find people who are doing it better than you. People who live in the biggest cities, people who are at the best schools, people who seem to have motivation oozing out of their very pores. In a 60 second video things always look effortless. But if you can take a step away from the noise, you realize: you're the same as everybody else. The only difference between you and the people you want so desperately to be is that they're taking a chance.

"But they're making quality outfits, videos, paintings, songs... things I don't!" You say. Bullshit. You are doing it. Think of the tiny creative things you've done throughout your life. For me: dance classes through my town's rec department when I was young, some emo prepubescent drawings from middle school, a handful of edits of my favorite movies, and outfits that make me feel like myself. The only thing I didn't do: post them online.

Usually when I make something, I'm glowing for a few hours on the high of creativity, and then I look at my phone and see everything I've done but done slightly better and suddenly my shoulders are slumped and my art is undersaturated. Unworthy. But the people we watch on our little electronic rectangles probably don't think what they're making is perfect either. Feeling insecure about something as beautiful and vulnerable as creativity is as inevitable as breathing.

Recently I had a conversation with my mom about binge eating. As something we've both struggled with, we decided that particular form of giving up on yourself isn't truly because you think you aren't worth it. Yes, the cycle exacerbates, and at some point you really do believe you don't deserve anything better-- but also, the moment when you decide you've already eaten too much today so you may as well hoover down an entire jar of peanut butter with honey is an excuse to be lazy. We beat ourselves up in order to justify self soothing in the easiest, most comfortable way possible.

So ask yourself: is the reason you hold yourself back because you think you're not good enough, or is that an excuse? Is the real reason that you're just scared to be vulnerable? Yes. Most likely, most definitely, most positively. It's scary admitting to the universe that you like what you've made, whether that means being proud of a graphite sketch alone in your 9'x9' bedroom or posting it online for the critique of everybody else.

So this summer, as I lounge in a swimsuit and go to the gym but also eat so much sugar, and hear the same words that have been etched inside my skull since I lost the elusive magic of childhood, I'm going to try something different. I'm going to write and read and find pictures I think are cool and anything else I’d like. I'm going to rebel not against the man, but against myself.

This is the year we dare, no matter how small the action. Scratch that-- especially when the action is small. We owe it to ourselves to try. Because a life without that isn't life at all.