Mich in Retrograde!

I have tried, and failed (and tried again to fail some more) to be the "it" girl. Or at least the girl who has her wits together. The girl with the 'themed', overly edited and filtered Instagram profile. The woman with the luscious locks flowing in the breeze, going on summer escapades in Maldives or Phuket, and getting numerous stamps on her passport.

But I just thought I wasn't pretty enough, or, yes, thin enough, or interesting enough to have an equally interesting profile. I always thought I need to be girlier. I need to wear more makeup. I need to wear frilly and lacy stuff. To trade my sneakers for ballet flats or something. To have a fancy leather handbag and not a $10 canvas tote to lug around.

I tried to go the beauty blogger/guru route. I posted beauty related posts, reviews, hauls, and tried to follow the footsteps of Michelle Phan, along with everybody else. I tried writing about makeup and nail polishes and hauls and fashion.

But beauty blogs are a dime a dozen, and whatever content I wrote just weren't up to scratch. Even I myself found them boring. There were already so many other girls writing about things they saw on Youtube, I wasn't going to add to the pile.

When that didn't pull through, I tried the Asian Drama and other geekiness type of blog. I had a somewhat better experience writing about it, but that didn't last long either. Watching endless dramas with the same plot twists over and over were tiring. If I got too engrossed in a game, I'd get so distracted and forget about blogging altogether. It felt more like a chore than losing myself in my game.

And of course, what woman hasn't been through the constant struggle of making her physical body look good? I've been in and out of exercise regimes that my own sanity has had a much more grueling work out than all my other gym sessions put together. And don't get me started on the food. Bleargh.

I get it. Blogging is hard and tedious. Showcasing yourself as someone you're definitely not is even worse. 

Call me lazy, but going the beauty route is expensive (I'm looking at you, Sephora). And although they say spend money on travel and not material goods, I believe my financial and mortgage situation is not something I can easily drop let alone spend all my money on a one way plane ticket around Asia. Even if I wanted to. And I found out I wasn't too much into dramas or anime as I thought I was. I'm the one funding my friends for a free Crunchyroll all-access pass or a premium DramaFever account. I'm such a good friend.

They say if you want something, you will find a way. If you don't, you'll make up excuses. Then maybe those things aren't what I really want if I keep finding reasons not to do them. If I'm not happy, why should I continue?

What I do know about myself is this: I'm tired of plodding along my life not being the best version of myself that I can be. Me. Not through someone else's mold, not through some Instagram lens filter and showcase snapshots of my life. Because that's just what they are. Snapshots. They're never going to be able to show what my life is really about. Not my struggles, not my feeble, yet numerous attempts at 'perfection'. Not perfection in the true sense of the word, but my own skewed view of perfection.

I'm 27 years old for crying out loud. Some of these things I should have already figured out. While my other friends and previous schoolmates are getting married, pregnant, or building careers left, right, and center, I'm here, looking through the looking glass of life.

That's not to say I haven't accomplished some milestones in my life, but I feel like I haven't stepped up to what more I could possibly be. I'm stuck in a so-so rut.

Which is why I want to start a blog. Again. Yeah, yeah, here I go again. But what if I throw caution to the wind and just write about what I actually want to write about. Screw these blog rules saying, if you want more traffic, make a blog that readers would actually want. Have a theme. Have something public interest thing to write about. Nobody wants to read about you. They want to read something they're interested in.

Well, bullshit.

I want to write about my journey of getting my life in check. It's not a lifestyle blog per se, but just little tips to myself and maybe to you, about wanting to grow up, but still clueless not quite getting it together yet. About being a woman. About being an accomplished 27 year old unmarried woman who may just know a little thing about life or two, and discover the rest along the way.