Lifestyle, and a response to my husband’s post.

“We feel bored because, deep inside ourselves, we know we can give more. Boredom is the pain of unused potential; it’s a disconnection to everything we can offer the world and vice versa.”

I jotted down this quote after spending an hour or so browsing through Medium articles. I write, but sometimes forget to read. This platform is an outlet and an inspiration. I am not the only person who has something to say, something I want to offer the world, something that could inspire someone. Anyone can inspire anyone. We should not limit, or tier, inspiration.

I am on a continued journey to discover what it is I do want to offer the world, and how to communicate that creatively and categorically. I have always been one to organize and reflect on my life.

After some research in the writing, creative, marketing world, I realized I do not have a specific niche or one area of expertise I express. I create content curated by my multiple interests and activities. This falls into the broad category of “lifestyle.” Might seem apparent enough, but I have never labeled or grouped my interests in this way before!

A lifestyle blog is best defined as a digital content representation of its author’s everyday life and interests.

Sounds good to me. My variety of content, as I look back on journals, instagram posts, and photographs, center around these topics:

marriage/relationship (soooo many long distance posts, am I right?)

home life/family (I have my own hashtag for my family…#thenikolausclan)

third culture kid/travel/city guides (I was raised this way; it’s a given)

culture/theology (gotta put those passions and degrees to good use)

food/recipes (cuz I love food and the idea of mixing ingredients to make something wonderful and yummy)

media/storytelling (music, photography, writing, collaborations, stories)

When I moved to Los Angeles in 2017, I wrote a blog a week to stay actively creative and foster discipline in my life. I did not write these blogs for other people, but for my own self-growth. The added beauty of it was that people followed along and responded to my process. An open journal for family and friends (and strangers).

Now that my masters is finished and I have a stable job (did I just write that sentence??), I want to bring that structure and challenge into my life again. I am nothing, if not proactive. But this new goal of weekly writings, or developing projects…I want them to be produced in a more efficient way. That is why I took the time to figure out labels and categories of my curated content — once something is named, it is much easier to define, breakdown, handle, express, and work with. “Lifestyle.”

So I have some idea of writing a weekly or fortnightly lifestyle post, dealing with food I cook, marriage ups and downs, coffeeshops I find, things I learned from my theology degree, how I view life, take risks, find beauty, and more.

Why not? No one is telling me to. No one is telling me not to. I like creating, and this pushes me to be more creative. But I want to go deeper into myself. I want to learn to be even more present in my current season. I want to love Frederick better and experience fuller. Thinking through these categories — these things I love — is a way I can pursue that. Writing to the public is how I will stay accountable. If people follow along or contribute, I am all the more richer for it. I am nervous to publish this (and have already waited a few days since writing it haha) because I know I will have to get to it once the world knows my plan. Guess that’s the point.

It is interesting, because my husband just posted an article last week about his struggle to create in this technological, social media saturated world. Read here, it is amazing. Funnily enough, though, we are coming from two different perspectives and experiences on how we relate to the roles of technology and social media in our individual creating process.

He needs to take a break from technology/social media because it is hindering his creativity. Whereas I am becoming more interactive with them because for me, it is actually a means to being more creative.

Husband writes, “We are infinitely more distracted and divided” because of technology, but I am finding myself more focused, and less lazy because of it. He says:

Constantly being surrounded by other people and things that inspire us simultaneously inhibits and encourages our creative flow…We so often lose sight of how to be creative in our own unique way and begin taking on the idiosyncrasies of those whose lives (appear to) exhibit true success.

I can totally see how people get caught up in copying and imitating other people’s #instagood lives, because they want that sort of influence or recognition too. I was heavily inspired by tezza on instagram when I first found her a few years ago. Last year when I was jobless and emotionally depleted, I had to stop visiting her feed because it made me sad, seeing all the travel and beauty, and knowing I was not living that life anymore. But that choice was more about learning my boundaries with envy, nostalgia, and contentment, not about lacking a creative spark or wanting her exact life.

Then this year, I got her book, InstaStyle, and one of the main messages throughout her pages are to be unique, be authentic, and be yourself — and that is what curates influence and inspiration.

Husband argues that “while the creative originality has consistently dropped, the temptation of imitation has steadily risen.”

I think in some ways, however, creative originality has risen, because there is so much content now to inspire. People might begin with imitating, but this imitation, or desire to imitate, can also inspire people to create off of that imitation, making something unique and new.

I see such vibrancy in the amount of content and inspiration out there. I almost feel like this constant inspiration that Husband talks about might in fact stimulate our minds more, to where we gather ideas upon ideas, but can still put our unique twist on creating. We should not limit, or tier, inspiration. Every individual offers something different. No one is you.

Husband talks about how people feel “pressure to do and produce things rapidly” and that this “has decreased the quality and authenticity of our creative output and in turn stultified our desire to create anything at all.” He calls for a more patient creativity, one where we step away from the demands of social media and create on our own time, in our own, natural way.

I think patience is extremely important when it comes to achieving creative goals and expectations you place on yourself. I personally find that behind the patience, there needs to be a determination and “daily grind” to create as well. Patience is only as good as the energy and perspective behind it, whether using technology and social media, or not. Patience is not passive, it is active. Patience always implies that there is work going on behind the scenes, something to be patience about, something to be patience for.

“What if we took the time to step away from the endless voices demanding our attention and mental energies and created something we believe to be beautiful and true to ourselves?”

For me, it is about compartmentalizing technology and its different facets, not avoiding it altogether. I know this culture of social media has already seeped so deeply into people’s time, identities, etc.. So maybe the best thing for those people to do, who are most affected by it, is to take a break. I see that, I get that. Definitely. Boundaries, boundaries, balance, boundaries.

But for my present personal journey, technology, digital storytelling, and social media are tools that fuel my creativity, and I am trying to embrace that now in new ways. Join me?

Love,

Caroline