It’s My (Blog) Birthday!

YAY! One full year of CuratedbyCarly! Truth be told, it took me a pretty insane amount of courage for me to get this website up and running. Even then, once it went live, I had no faith that I would keep up with it (even if it was on and off) for an entire year. I was terrified then (and even sometimes now) to put my writing out there on the internet for anybody in the world to read.

In the decades before the internet, and even worse, social media, if you wanted to share any sort of writing (or any form of artistic expression, really) with the world, it had to be in a physical form. You had to write it by hand or go to a printing press and get it printed. Safe to say we have come a long way, but now our writing can go further…reach more people…have more impact, whether that be positive or negative.

But, alas, here we are one year later, and this blog has done more for me than I could have ever planned for it to. So, here I am to share with you how much this platform has taught me in the months that I have had it. Buckle up, because it’s a long and bumpy ride!

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For as long as I can remember, I have been embarrassed of my hobbies and passions because they were different than those of the people around me. Many of you wouldn’t know this but when I was growing up I took sewing lessons. For years and years, I took sewing lessons. I sewed quilts and clothes and stuffed animals and literally anything you could think of. It was my lovely and incredible grandmother who originally taught me when I was finally old enough actually be able to use my fine motor skills. Then I began going to classes in the cutest little shop with the kindest, most inspiring teacher. Eventually, I got old enough that I began to work at the studio and assist in teaching the lessons. Honest to god, it was the best job I ever had to this day. Everyday I was surrounded by color, laughter, and creativity. It was inspiring and I loved it, but in high school while I was doing it, I really didn’t talk about it all that much. It was a different hobby to have, not one that I shared with anybody else at my school. Nobody ever judged me for it, in fact, I think most of my friends thought it was pretty cool, but I was shrouded by so much insecurity that I couldn’t imagine having a niche interest. Being different? Nope, couldn’t do it. So I just kept it to myself.

The same went for reading and books. The only hazy memories I have from middle school are those that took place in the library. My middle school was built in the early 1900’s, and the library was insane. Impossibly tall ceilings, enormous windows, and a mix-matched array of thrifted couches. (Authors Note: I have not visited this particular library in probably ten years. Chances are, it was probably way more musty than it was magical, but to a nerdy little middle schooler, I loved it.) I remember that’s where I read the Twilight books for the first time, as well as The Hunger Games series. But when the time finally came for me to go to high school, I left my love for reading back in that big, sunlit library.

Nobody else was spending their free time in the library in high school, at least, not the kids that I wanted to like me. The “cool” kids if you will. It’s a deeply flawed mindset that comes with wanting to fit in, but arguably, it’s unavoidable for so many kids.

I did manage to find a new passion in these high school years - and even that, was arguably for the wrong reasons. Around the time that I was giving up reading in order to be more “cool,” (which also didn’t work by the way if you guys were wondering), I had also found my way into an introduction to journalism class, where I was greeted by some of the rowdiest, most chaotic kids I had ever met. They spent the class block talking about things that were going on in the community, shows that were popular on Netflix, movies that were coming out, and of course, every shred of school gossip they could get their hands on. The group was a huge conglomeration of all different high school stereotypes; football players, cheerleaders, theater kids, and everything in between. But they all got along, they talked, laughed, and danced, and when they went out into the hallways during class changes, they were popular. Not to mention, they were welcoming. Truly, one of the reasons I stayed with journalism and came to love it was because of the people I worked with. We were a team, and thinking back on those days now, it makes me wonderful if high school every really was that bad. (It was. It definitely was, this is the nostalgia talking.)

Notably, this was also the first time I allowed my work to be published. At the end of every month, a lucky handful of students would wheel a cart up to the front office to pick up the newspapers - fresh off the press, their hands streaked in ink. I remember the first time that my name appeared on that paper (and the first time it appeared in the byline on the front page), and I hated it originally. Besides my family, I didn’t want anybody else to read my article. It was too vulnerable to see my own words of paper, much less for anybody else to see them.

But when I started branching out a little bit and discovering my writing style and what it was I liked to write about, that feeling quickly wore off. During this time, I wrote a lot of news articles. People are opinionated, I was too back then (sometimes I still can be), and more-so than anything else, it was easy to get quotes from them for my stories, so I focused my efforts there. Eventually, I wanted to get as many articles in the paper as my teacher would allow, and thus spurred a new passion.

For a time, when I first got to college, I let that passion fall into disuse too. Who makes money off of writing? And to answer that question, not me. Not most writers I know. But that doesn’t stop them from doing it, and nor should it. I stayed away from the liberal arts for about as long as I possibly could, and then I returned to my roots. I was never cut out for college-level math class anyway. I started taking literature classes for fun again because I enjoyed analyzing books. I changed my major (for the third, and final time) to English with a concentration in Journalism, and I started to feel like myself again.

That being said, I was still plenty insecure — truth be told I don’t think insecurity is something that you are ever able to truly eradicate from your psyche. Even now, insecurity still finds its way to creep in and taunt me when I’m feeling vulnerable. Nonetheless, I wasn’t going around shouting from the rooftops how much I loved to read and in all my time in college I never once checked out a library book. The library was for socializing and the occasional bout of studying. But then, one year ago in the winter of my junior/senior year, I decided to embrace it.

At this point, I had found friends with similar passions, and some that were even more niche than mine, which helped me build up the courage I needed to be true to who I was. I realized that the friends I had, didn’t really care whether or not I was reading and writing in my free time. They supported me, they enjoyed reading what I wrote for different campus publications, and at the same time, they weren’t needlessly invested in what I chose to do for fun as long as it wasn’t hurting anybody.

And thus, was born a newfound sense of freedom. Nobody cared!

Well, they cared in a way that they should, as friends. If I asked them to read it they would, and plenty of them would read it just to support me, but they didn’t actually care that I had a hobby that was different than theirs. It wasn’t anybody’s fault but my own, but finally, I was able to let go of this intrinsic need to “fit in.”

This space allowed me to express myself in a candid and unfiltered way — to take ownership of my passions. And in doing that, it allowed me to be…me.

I started this blog assuming that only a few of my close friends and my family members would read it — and for the most part, that’s 99% of the people who do. But, occasionally I’m able to reach farther, to impact more people, and that’s what’s exciting to me about having this platform. Once, I would’ve been internally panicking at the thought of someone reading my writing, but now I’m ecstatic when I see that little number of “readers” go up on my SquareSpace dashboard. I want people to be able to find joy and humor and solace in my writing, and I hope for those of you who take the time to click the link to this page, I can provide that.

Thank you for sticking with me and supporting me for the past year. It took me a long time to feel comfortable sharing with you all, but if you take anything away from this post in particular, let it be these two short things: firstly, the people you want to keep around in your life, won’t care if your passions are different than theirs. Secondly, (and arguably most importantly) life is so much more fun when you’re not trying to be cool!