Keeping it real
One theme of The Time of My Life is how some people wear a mask, live a fake life, don’t *keep it real*. For one character it’s to do with what she does online. Most people post a shiny, happy version of their life which is not 100% the truth. It can lead to feelings of inadequacy, comparison and competitiveness amongst the online community. In the old days we might have compared ourselves to Shirley down the road who’d had a new hair-do, or got a new car. But nowadays we follow and aspire to the polished, filtered, and very often unrealistic lives of thousands of strangers on our phone.
I’m glad social media wasn’t big in my younger days. The day-to-day was hard enough with my eating disorder issues. Wanting to be thin wasn’t the only reason behind my illness, but Instagram certainly wouldn’t have helped. As it was, I wore a mask and lived in denial. I didn’t tell family about the eating for years whilst at uni. Just like another character in this story, I was hiding a dark secret, putting on a jolly face, pretending all was well. I did this again in my early forties when I became published. I’d felt the pressure of deadlines, of rankings and reviews being compared, of having to post photos of myself. I put on a front, created an image of what I thought an author should be like. Of course, it all eventually fell apart and in 2016 I got sober – and started to talk online about the real me and the challenges.
Being real, on a wider scale, let people in, and letting people in meant I got help.
Life is immeasurably better now. I am what I am, take it or leave it.
No one wants to look back on their life, from their death bed, and realise it was all a show.
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