Live, laugh, love your one wild and precious life.

How a younger version of me taught me to stop comparing myself to others.

I spent most of my early twenties dealing with an undercurrent of disappointment. It was brought on by getting married young and the real boom of social media, which took up most of my time since I was newly working in the field and building a business using my Instagram account. Because of this, I spent hours on social media and was inundated with all the interesting and beautiful things other people were doing. 

I had this underlying sadness in my life that plagued me and often felt inescapable. The strange part? I thought I loved my life. I was in college, freshly married, and had just gone through the whirlwind of getting engaged and planning a wedding. I'd moved into my apartment and then a better apartment I loved dearly. On paper, everything should have been peachy, but in reality, I had this low hum of disappointment that reverberated through most aspects of my life.

My depression was never worse than it was then. I think it was because I was unprepared to be thrust into the "real world" at a time when we were newly gaining windows into everyone else's worlds that looked curated, put together, and more fun. 

I noticed this when I bought things that I saw people post about online. When I put them on my body or in my home, I disliked them nearly immediately. The fact that the object in question was mine made it feel less special.

I know now that I was completely missing from my own life. So much excitement combined with the disorientation after graduating college put me adrift somewhere else. I was sleepwalking through, hoping things would get better or, at the very least, different. Eventually, we decided to uproot our entire life and move to Austin, TX. There, I got shocked into some presence of mind thanks to meditation and picking up writing again. I realized that social media was a trick mirror, and my friends' lives were exactly as messy as mine. I realized that comparison really is the thief of joy, not just in the way you might find on a Home Good pillow, but in an honest and tangible way that ruins your life. I also realized that my relationship with social media needed work. It was within the pages of my journal, and in the quiet moments that I realized disliking my life benefitted no one, least of all me. I began reframing how I was feeling. 

Was I disappointed with my life because I didn't like it or because I was inundated with a live feed of other lives devoid of context and difficulties? 

What did I really want when it was just me and my journal? 

Didn't I already have those things? 

Late in my twenties, I did some meditation with a therapist around my younger self. She wanted to find a great love of her life, leave her small town, write, and take photos of interesting people. Check, check, check. In the meditation, in which I met a younger version of myself in our kindergarten classroom, I saw myself beaming with pride. She wasn't scared or disappointed in me; she was thrilled about the life we get to live. She was so proud of this version of me, not some idealized me that doesn't exist. She loved my life and helped me learn that I could love it, too. 

Thankfully, my thirties helped me continue this work, and now I can honestly say that I enjoy most aspects of my life. No longer do I buy things online and hate them upon receipt. When the creeping sensation of comparison bubbles up, I remind myself that the object of my envy is likely comparing themselves to someone else in a never-ending cycle that only leaves each of us disappointed. 

Instead, I make a habit of making lists of the things I love about my life, my relationships, my city, and my home. I spend as much time as I can enjoying this life I have worked to find joy in. I carve out time to have fun and do things I enjoy. I spend my weekends at my friends' coffee shops, thrift shopping with my husband, and going on long walks. I get to work with my friends. I do this all for a younger version of myself whose dream was to have a lot of friends whom she loved and who got to travel all over the place doing something she really cared about. It makes me happy to make her happy.

Some days, I still fall back into a pattern of self-comparison. On those days, I try to remind myself that there's a younger version of me who doesn't have a care in the world about what someone else is doing. She also has no idea what social media is. On those days, I try to channel her and ask what she wants me to do. I take a younger version of me on a date somewhere, then I journal to her about all the awesome things I’ve done, like the time I was on a friend’s comedy show in front of a sold out crowd, or the time I got to go onstage at ACL Live at The Moody Theater and present a birthday cake to a dear friend who was playing a show there. I write to her about the time I went to Paris alone. I tell her about the year I hosted a podcast and wrote a monthly column for Texas Monthly. I tell her about all the work I’ve been doing, and all the musicians I’ve seen live. I talk to her about the years I’ve spent working for myself. I can almost see how thrilled she is to know that we’ve done so much.

This practice helps me remind myself that I’ve done incredible things, and I’m just getting started. It helps me remember that I am her greatest dream come true for her life, even if there's still work to be done.

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