Every year I say, “this will be my year.” Every year. Something about New Year’s Day and the bells ringing and the balls dropped and the tteokguk I eat with my family, convinces me that something is beginning anew, bringing an inevitable force of change by some astronomical power. But January 1st is just a concept someone made up at some point. So is any date, for that matter, months and weeks and all that are too. I know that there’s a science behind it with the sun and the tides, something along those lines. I know that back in the day they used to tell the passing of time by some calendar-clock gadget that looked like a big metal bowl on the floor, I very well may be totally making this up but I swear I remember seeing pictures of it in my elementary textbooks. It really doesn’t matter though, I’m not a scientist. Dates are fake. You heard it here first. But I digress.
I love to write. Give me my Moleskine journal and a ballpoint pen and I’ll go to town. After class or on a plane or at breakfast, I’ll write down every stream of consciousness. Genuinely, nothing enthralls me like penning my deepest thoughts. When you write you can open yourself up to spill out words you would never think to say out loud. You’re conversing with yourself, really, you know that nobody is going to roll their eyes at you changing your mind every other paragraph, or glance down at their watch when you launch into overthinking about the same old things.
A big part of my obsession with writing, I think, is the fact that I discover absurdly interesting facets of my mind. This is scientifically proven (unlike dates) and measured by objective metrics. It is a fact, I find myself fascinating and cool and deep, and I feel beyond lucky that I get to know myself so well. When I write, it all gets magnified. There is no one else from whom I would like to hear unsolicited opinions about pop culture, self-deprecating jokes or insights on any little subject, other than myself.
Call me vain, but the truth of the matter is that I think everyone shares this touch of narcissism. It’s the reason we love to overshare, and with technology, it’s become the Achilles’ heel of our generation.
When I was brainstorming New Year’s resolutions this past month, I considered quitting social media. I spent a good chunk of the last parts of 2022 thinking about social media and how much I hate it sometimes. Most of the time. Then I thought about deleting all my socials and going off the grid, but I realized that’s only cool and mysterious if I were to drop out of school and go hiking through the Himalayas or something. I need my degree and a job and a social life so I will not be doing that. I also realized that I am way too invested in certain aspects of other people’s lives and that I would come crawling back to the login page soon enough. To see Becky’s Boomerang of her tropical drinks on a family vacation, or to see Johnny in his Raybans holding up another damn fish. (The names of these characters are fictional.) (Please dial it down on the fish photos. I’m so serious right now.)
It started with the introduction of Snapchat in middle school; then, our entire social lives in high school were mapped out and engraved in WhatsApp conversations. Now it’s ten different apps, it’s what your aesthetic is, how careless your monthly photo dump posts look. A dinner or a concert quickly becomes a mission to capture these moments in a way that looks effortless, when really it takes up all the effort in the world and most of your phone’s storage space.
My attempt at manifesting this dilemma into actually taking the action and deleting social media never came to fruition. But it’s still something I think about every day. Until then, I’ll keep giving in to my vice of oversharing. On Instagram, this column, or otherwise.
Reyna Lim is a sophomore double majoring in finance and English. She enjoys writing about her unsolicited opinions, assessing celebrity homes in Architectural Digest videos and collecting lip gloss. Reach out with coffee bean recommendations and ’80s playlists at slim6@nd.edu.
