I know I've had too much coffee when my stomach is spitting bile over something I have to do in three weeks.

I also know that after been PROFOUNDLY absent for the past year, I've just overloaded the internet with my internal ramblings.

Which includes today the fact that my anxiety is magnified by coffee, which is also incredibly apparent today.

I thoroughly wish I was the type of person that could thrive on chaos and change, to take life by the horns and make it mine.

I know thoroughly that I am the exact opposite of that type of person and it is so deeply embedded in my DNA I will continue to be this person for the rest of the lives that I live.

I find comfort in the repeating patterns of hours and expectations. I find comfort in a schedule and knowing what is ahead.

There is so much unknown in the world. Between wars and death and sudden life-altering mishaps and accidents, I find that by being able to control what I can lets me take on these tsunamis of changes with a little more grace. And by little, I literally mean little.

Why don't you take pictures anymore?

So, after not writing for months, I seem to be finding my words again.

In one vein, it's a blessing to finally free these monsters that have been embedding themselves in my cellulite the past....well, long awhile.

In another, I'm finding it hard to come to terms with other things I've been actively trying to bury while I've been not writing.

For today, our introspective blog post will focus on my mother's favorite question:

Why don't you take pictures anymore? 

It's a refrain I've heard over and over the past year-ish and one that I've never really been able to answer. I generally just sloughed it off, using the casual, usual excuses:

I'm tired.
I'm busy.
Work is hard.
School is hard.
Esme won't sit still. 
My battery is dead.
It's winter outside.

Whatever.

However,  as I wrote my snarky-Instagram caption today, I started to really think about why I've been absent from behind my lenses as of late.

So here it goes the short list of why I haven't been taking photos.....

• I would hate to take away the significance from someone else's photography when they are 10000 times better than me just because I think I take decent photos
• everyone takes pictures now, and I hate comparing myself to other people (see first reason as added reasoning)
• I'm tired of just being the bitch that everyone assumes will just take the pictures all the time. 
• I'm tired of feeding into this "picture-perfect" mentality that social media breeds, so rather than focusing on life we focus on achievements, who did this, who took a better picture of the same freaking bush
• I'm sad that I'm part of the problem when it comes to continuing the cycle of "picture-perfect" social media feeds, and the non-attainable lifestyles we yearn to have. 

But what it really comes down to...

is that I'm realizing I'm tired of missing life while trying to remember life by taking a picture to impress people that I was there/it happened/whatever.

I can't even talk about how many sunsets or beautiful conversations I've probably missed, framing up my next Instagram post or Tweet. I've joined the herd and become too focused on the capture and the sweet endorphins a "like" gives me, that I forget about the serotonin that comes from clearing my mind and just simply soaking in the life around me.

I don't want to remember Esme only through the pictures I have of her -- I want to remember sitting with her on the couch or playing with her Lamb Chop.

I don't want to remember my family only as artfully captured life-style shots. I want to remember my brother's laugh as he forced us to drink terribly crafted cocktails and my parents dancing in the kitchen to whatever song comes on the radio because I was there, drinking those awful concoctions and practicing the moonwalk.

I want to remember sitting in camp, playing card games for hours and my grandma's dorky dance when she wins (as irritating as it is) because I saw it so many times, not because I have a boomarang file of it on my phone.

I want to remember my cousin's excitement when I took him to Dory and let him have a huge tub of popcorn and large pop and I want to remember it because it made my happy to do something special for him-- not because I got "kudos" on the internet for it.

Yes, photographs can help us remember these things but how can you remember them if the photos don't evoke the feelings?

If I take a picture, I want it to remind me of the fear I had as I let Connor take me into the middle of nowhere in his freaky looking Subaru and almost killing me.

I want it to remind me of the time that Justine and I had spent the whole day just screwing around, laughing until our sides hurt. I want to remember the burn of the pizza we ate after walking around Chicago all day and the feel of her hugging me as I drove away.

I want to remember my LIFE as it was through photos, not life how I chose to portray it through photos.

Photography was originally created to capture life as it is. Now, it's a way to create a fictional reality that we can all pretend we live in.

No one ACTUALLY lives in the pristine Instagram account you follow, with muted tones and perfectly turned down beds.

No one ACTUALLY laughs nonchalantly while sipping a mimosa with their friends at 1 in the afternoon.

No one ACTUALLY takes a picture that looks that good "just by accident" or that it was just "a quick snap".

So long story short -- 

I don't take photos or even post "good" photos often anymore (even when I do take them) because the photos that I take are meant to help me remember a life well-lived.

The ones that I don't take were because I was living a well-lived life.

Just a different shade of mess

The start of a new school year always makes me wax poetic. Regardless of the fact that I have no school supplies to purchase or syllabi to read, something about the fresh page start of another school year makes me nostalgic. It makes me yearn for the simpler times when a new school year meant seeing old friends again and learning new things, not another tally in the countdown until death.

Not to be morbid or anything.

It's just the older I get, the more I realize how precious life is.

The more I realize how precious it is to use life wisely, the quicker I am to become paralyzed by the fear that I'm not LIVING enough, that I am not USING my potential.

Which leads to me wasting life watching dorky sitcoms and harboring resentment of my first-world problems,

which eventually leads me to reading another upsetting story about a person's life who is cut short/ Kardashian drama / whatever,

 which then makes me feel like I'm wasting the quality time in my life to do something meaningful.

I know I'm not the only one, but sometimes it feels like it. In a world where life is glossed to the highest sheen before been placed benevolently on social media, it feels like I am alone in my dirty, dusty window display. I yearn to have the carefully curated Instagram accounts that feature muted photos that are perfectly posed yet I am the person who posts the blurry photos that no one cares about that are over-saturated and useless. I search endlessly for gripping phrases to resonate across the pixels that tether me to my "friends" only to be disappointed when it fails to go viral.

I know I am not the only one who lives in a world that is not perfectly saturated in rainbow hues but delicately muddied from movement, but it sometimes appears that way. I feel like I'm trapped knee-deep in quicksand, hoping to hold onto my front of "ease" and "happiness" while all the while working my ass off to hold it all together, to not get lost in the riptide of our generation.

So this is my proclamation into the internet -- that you are not alone, whoever you are. Your existence is not only vital to our electronic eco-system, but it is just as exquisitely imperfect as mine. I beg you, please don't forget that.

While you hop from perfectly manicured social media account to perfectly manicured social media account, remember that underneath those shiny veneers, there are people just as cracked and human as you. Their blood flows just as sluggishly, through veins laden with their hopes and dreams. They just happen to wear their existence in a different shade of mess.