I realized recently how much time I spend paying attention to everyone else’s life. I ask my friends what they’re doing, where they’re going, what they’re reading, what they’re watching, what they did over the weekend. Then I open social media and get even more of it. Vacations. Friends. Races. Dinners. Random Tuesday nights that somehow look more interesting than mine. And then I look around at my own life and start wondering what the hell I’m missing. The uncomfortable truth is that maybe I am missing something. I’m lonely sometimes. I’m bored sometimes. I spend a lot of time taking care of things and people, and sometimes I look at everyone else actually living and wonder when my life got so small. But I also don’t know how much of that feeling actually belongs to me anymore and how much comes from constantly having everyone else’s life shoved in front of mine. Maybe I’ve been looking outward so much that I don’t even know what my own life feels like without the comparison. And honestly, that scares me a little. What if I turn down all that noise and still feel lonely? What if I discover there really are things I need that I’m not getting? But there’s another possibility too. What if I take a walk without posting it, make something without immediately showing someone, have a good day nobody knows about, take a picture just because I want to remember it, and slowly realize my life was happening the whole fucking time? I don’t want to stop sharing. I love sharing pieces of my life with people I care about. I just don’t want being witnessed to be what makes my life feel real. So maybe this isn’t about disappearing from social media or becoming some fiercely independent person who doesn’t need anyone. Maybe I just need to turn down the noise of everybody else’s lives long enough to hear my own. And if what I hear tells me something is missing, then I want to be brave enough to face that. But if I hear a life I’ve been overlooking because I was too busy watching everyone else live theirs, I want to be brave enough to finally live that too.