Do I Share Too Much Online?

I was asked recently why I share so much of my life online. I was also asked why I put my relationship online – after all, what happens if we were to break up? Isn’t that a bit embarrassing? Wouldn’t I have to delete all my photos? As I typically do, I went into over thinking mode – was I really sharing too much? Is it really all necessary? But, one of my new year’s resolutions is to try my hand at being logical for once; so instead of going crazy and shutting down, I just had a bit of a think. Obviously, and as you do when you’re asked why do you share so much online, I decided to share why I share so much online, online.

If you’ve ever wandered, now you know…

 

Because it helps others
This sounds really cheesy and perhaps most people will think it’s a load of sh*te, but actually one of the motivations behind why I blog is because I know it helps others. One reason I know it will help others is because when I was younger, especially in times I was struggling with confidence, if there were such platforms as blogs floating about I definitely would have gotten a lot of use out of them when I was really just trying to figure out what I was doing, and the kind of person I wanted to be. Even today, I still spend a lot of time reading and browsing through blogs as I find it to be a great source of inspiration and motivation to read other people’s stories. When I get messages from people saying my blog has helped them face X fear, or has helped them be more productive, or has helped them with a job application – it’s such a lovely feeling! But doing this takes honesty – there’s so point being fluffy with these blog posts and expecting it to really resonate with anyone – it’s real, it’s raw and it’s honest, and that’s how it works.

Top: New Look (similar)
Jeans: Topshop (similar)
Jacket: Missguided
Photos: Marianne Olaleye

Because I feel like it
On the topic of why I’ve shared so much of my relationship online – I’ve thought about this even before I was asked about it. I mean, first of all, I actually don’t think I share that much of my relationship online – a few pictures here and there never hurt anybody, but fair enough. Secondly – I share so many other photos online of myself, my friends, my family, my holidays, the events I attend, it would take a lot of effort (for me, personally) to go out of the way to purposely exclude Levi from all of my social media, when he’s probably the person I spend most of my time with, just because I’m worried about that people might think I’m doing the most. On the question of – what if we break up?! Well… what if we do? Is that not a natural part of most young people’s lives? It’s really nothing to feel embarrassed about because sometimes sh*t happens (ofcourse, ideally, that particular sh*t doesn’t happen). The fear of what could be is not going to stop me from living my life now.

Because I’m a blogger
Blogging and social media go hand in hand. In fact, one of the biggest parts of blogging is really connecting with your readers and also getting them to identify with you – it’s quite hard to do this if you’re completely hiding your life or not being open. It sort of just comes with the package, it’s what I do. I do wonder sometimes if I’d be a lot more guarded about my life and what I’m up to if I wasn’t a blogger, and who knows, perhaps I would. But to be completely honest, I think I’ve always been fairly open (as are a lot of us in this age of social media), so I doubt too much would change in that case.

It’s an outlet
A lot of us spend our lives being told what to do by other people. With blogging – there’s none of that. I can really – for the most part – publish what I want and do what I want on here because it’s my platform that I’ve built on my own. Because of this, I find blogging to be such a huge release to get things off my chest and hear stories of people that have experienced the same thing. For example, I wasn’t too sure what the reception would be for my “gymtimidation” blog post, but it turned out that this is something so many of us had experienced in some sort of way! Before I was blogging, and when I was a lot younger, I’d actually keep my own diary; so I’ve always seen writing as an outlet for myself, the only thing is that now all my thoughts are public for everyone to see.

Sharing your life so publicly all the time definitely does have it’s downsides, for one it opens you up to a world of creeps (and critiquers), but it also sort of means that people know so much about you, without even having to speak to you. For example, my “year in review” is literally an open book to my life in 2017, and as I’ve said in that post, my 2017 can be completely summed up with the word “meh”, which could be surprising to some people – even those that know me – as from the outside looking in my year probably didn’t look as “meh” as it felt to me. But, all you need to do is click on the post and have a browse to find out exactly what was getting me down, and just like that, my thoughts are spilled open for the world to see. Whilst there’s positives and negatives – and care needs to be taken in terms of the extent of how much you share (for e.g. my Snapchat followers probably don’t need to know my exact location at every point in time) – I have yet to have any regrets for making my life as accessible as it currently is.