I'll Always Take The Messy
Ever started a post, then doubted yourself, and changed it? I'm here to say, let's do 'real' not perfect...
“Your Imperfections Are Marks Of Authenticity
And That Is The Beauty Of You.”
Isaac Fowler
Have you ever started writing a social media post, then paused… read it back… considered it… tweaked it… second-guessed it… reworded it?
Wondering if it sounds ‘right’… if it will resonate… if it’s how someone else would say it?…
And before you know it, your ‘message’, the one you initially went on to post about has become overly complex and sometimes completely different to the one you intended…
Trust your first attempt…
The initial words you scripted are the most authentic…
And who cares if it has a typo, or could have been explained a little better, or if it’s how someone else would have said it…
I’d always rather take the messy but honest and real, than the perfectly manicured.
I’m here for the messy
It’s like the content of my social media scroll, I really resonate with the real-life, humbling and human ones that show the rest of us that real-life is not a vision of filtered perfection, it’s messy, we get things wrong, we all have doubts and guilt, we all trip over in the street sometimes, we all embarrass ourselves in public, waving to a stranger you thought you recognised or attempting to break in to a car that looks identical to yours! Anyone else, or was that just me?
We all wake up with ‘bed hair’ and bags under our eyes, we would all much rather be having coffee with friends or sitting reading all day than working or working-out!
And I feel drawn to those posts whose words are raw and undiluted, like the real images of other people’s lives…
It makes me feel human… it makes me feel connected… plugged into the rest of the world… and it makes me feel empowered to carry on as I am.
This is all coming from someone who definitely does not have it all figured out and aspires to sit comfortably at the confidence table of sharing my words, instead of right there in the messy thick of self-doubt!
Social media Vs Substack
And I don’t particularly like sharing on social media because it makes me feel incompetent alongside all those seemingly capable people out there, but being suitably stubborn at times, this is also exactly why I do it!
To push myself out of my comfort zone, to let go (or reluctantly try to) because I know it’s good for me, and I have hope in the fact that there may be just one person out there who feels the same, and is quietly comforted by one of my posts.
Here on Substack, however, my writing feels different.
I feel I’m journaling straight from my heart onto the page, which is then lovingly gifted to friends I feel comfortable around.
Why then can I not feel the same with a social media post? Perhaps because it feels more of a ‘free-for-all’ or more like a competitive space, everybody reaching for likes, shares and reposts.
I feel like people come to Substack specifically for connection and honest writing, and that’s what I love about it.
And does it really matter at the end of the day if a post receives 1 or 1000 ‘likes’?
Who knows, perhaps those 1000 reactions could be from people who didn’t even read past the first sentence, yet that 1 person may have resonated so deeply with your words that it’s changed their whole day…
So I’m standing alongside you to say let’s share our real words, because those initial ones that we lay down will be the most authentic and true words we can speak, and that’s what we all really want to hear.
The truth is that we shouldn’t want to sound like anyone else.
We’re beautifully and uniquely us, and if that means posting different content, in a different way and using a different narrative, then, to me, that’s worth celebrating.
It’s about having faith in our own voice.
Take care and much love,
Julie x
Feel free to share your socials with me here, I’d love to see what your voice has to say 💖
And you can find me authentically fumbling along on Instagram here: