Ah Christmas. Sparkly lights at every street corner, endless “All I want for Christmas is you” echoes while waiting for a Peppermint Mocha at Starbuck’s, endless gifts guides and sparkly outfits on social media. Same old routine, different year. Don’t get me wrong, I get it. Celebrating Christmas is a tradition and we always find comfort in traditions. BUT, am I too crazy to say that I am bored of the oh so called magic of Christmas? That I can’t wait until Mariah Carey’s voice finally stops haunting my head? Maybe it has to do with the fact the holidays season is my time of Breakups. Once every three years, the Christmas ghost never fails to visit me, taking one love after another. So Yes I will admit it, I’ve been Grinched, but then again it is easier to dislike something than embracing the pain related to it.
Something I love about Christmas though? Vlogmas. This is something that came a long way before I started blogging, when Vlogmas brought sunshine to dark cold afternoons spent in the library studying for finals. I felt exhausted and overworked, but these daily 10 minutes never failed to give me strength to keep up with it. Probably because social media has the magic to show you to the world while you are stuck in one place, to make you feel excited while your life is temporarily on hold. Plus, nothing more comforting than seeing that even the people you look up to are after all, human. That they fail to smile sometimes, that they break plates as they heart break too, that they fuck up more times than they succeed. Christmas has this power over people, it makes us over-sentimental. For the good and for the bad. The aftermath is probably some of the realest content you will find out there, Claire Marshall never fails to blow my mind and shed my heard to pieces. I have never said that online, but Claire is the one person that made me think “I want to do that too, I want to make people cry, I want to make them laugh, I want to make them happy, I want to make them feel everything”. So I wrote everything down because just like Claire, telling my story in my own tone is what relieved me when everything ached. I knew I was good at communicating my feelings, but I never thought that I had a life that was Vlog-Worthy. So last year, I partly committed to Vlogmas by posting daily short vlogs on my Instagram Story and let me tell you, my heart lit like a Christmas tree (cheesy xmas metaphor come thruuuu). It really wasn’t about growing my account through different content or tracking the amount of people watching. It was about saying “Hey guys, so today this happened to me”. I told the fun stories, showed some awkward Karaoke moments and also spoke about hard times. This was me having a different conversation, one without prose or color filter on it, one without trying so hard to be like everybody else. It happened to be therapeutic, the usually shitty month of December became fun and entertaining. I found myself going to Christmas Markets, Vlogging hilarious moments with my grandma and waking up every morning with the prospect of doing something fun. So this year, I decided to fully commit to Vlogmas to show you the effortless me. This definitely translates in a lot of makeup free moments and solo dancing in my Kitchen, but this is me. Some of you might expect to see me unboxing blogger mail and mass-attending events, but it is truly not the type of life I live nor the kind of moments I want to share. As much as the Grinch might have possessed me, my definition of Christmas is really not aligned with #theglam. Vlogmas always makes me remember that Christmas is not about the lights, it’s not about the presents or the songs, Christmas is about the people. About how much impact 365 days can have on someone, the transformations they have gone through and the obstacles they have encountered on the way. About the break-ups and make-ups, the fucking ups and standing ups, the tears and laughters, the kisses and the disses, the hiring and firing, the moving and settling, the friending and unfriending. I am capturing it all so I can remember who I was 365 days from now. To embrace the fact that no matter how boring or imperfect my life might look, it is mine and mine only. Shared to the entire world perhaps, but nowhere to be found on anyone else’s Instagram feed or blog. All I can wish is that somewhere in the world, a girl studying for her finals finds peace in knowing that living a normal life is okay, that feeling all kinds of emotions is how it is supposed to be and that there is still so much more to the world awaiting for her.
WHAT I’M WEARING TODAY: PEACE COLLECTIVE Jacket // Zara denim and boots // GUCCI bag
I need to get better at vlogging! I still feel so awkward talking in front of the camera. But it does seem like a really good way to let things out and get more comfortable with yourself. And yeah, I always find Christmas to be kind of awkward because there are so many traditions and expectations and it’s kind of weird if you’re not part of it. For me Christmas was never a huge thing because I have a small family and my mom usually worked on Christmas so mine were always so different from the ones in the movies or that even my friends/classmates/coworkers talked about. This year I’m learning that Christmas is what you make of it. And of course peppermint mochas.
xx