I ditched my side part a few years ago — because Facebook said it wasn’t cool anymore. I even almost gave up my skinny jeans.
Again, because of Facebook.
I’ve always felt like everyone else got an instruction manual on how to live life while I struggled to figure it out on my own — with very minimal success. And somewhere along the lines, I guess I decided that Facebook was as good of a guide to life as any.
I spent hours scrolling through my feed, taking mental notes: This is how a 30-something should dress. This is what their house should look like. This is what they should do on weekends. This is how happy they should be.
This is what life is supposed to look like, and I’m doing something wrong because mine doesn’t match up.
The algorithm knew exactly what I thought I wanted — more perfectly curated lives to compare myself to. More “guides” on what was wrong with my life and how to fix it. More evidence that everyone else had it all figured out.
But here’s the thing about using Facebook as my guide to life: I was reading from a book where everyone is their own editor and shares only the best chapters. I was trying to write my entire story based on other people’s highlight reels.
I wasted hours comparing my real-life, behind-the-scenes footage to everyone else’s highlights without recognizing that they were only sharing their best moments. Every scroll through my feed told me that I was doing everything wrong. I didn’t see the messy homes cropped out of those perfect kitchen photos or the awkward moments edited out of flawless videos.
I only saw the final cut and knew my life could never compete.
It took years of doom-scrolling and therapy to finally start wondering why I’d given Facebook so much power over my happiness, my choices, my life. Why did I decide that strangers on the internet knew better than I did about how I should live?
And now, with 40 just over a year away, I’m tired of chasing a perfect “reality” based on an ever-changing algorithm and the opinions of people I’ll never meet.
So, I’m writing my own manual. It’s messy and imperfect, but I’m learning that the best chapters come from listening to myself instead of an algorithm. I’ll probably never have the flawlessly curated life of an Influencer, but you know what? That’s okay.
Maybe the best part of living without an instruction manual is getting to write my own story — side part, skinny jeans, and all.