solid.sevenIt bothers me when people say to do stuff for yourself. Like yes, when you do stuff, you shouldn't do it with the sole intent of seeking approval, attention etc. from others. You should first and foremost do whatever it is because you truly love it and want it.
At the same time doing something strictly for yourself is fucking lame(to an extent). In fact, if you really, really are passionate about something you should want to share that with other people...no? What is something worth if you can't share it with others? I mean really think about it. I personally can't think of one thing that I have ever truly cared about that I don't want others to be a part of.
Think about the sickest day of skiing you've ever had(only using skiing as an example because this is NS). Think about how hyped you were, how you felt about it during and after, what it left you with, etc. Isn't that all stuff you want to share with someone? Isn't it fair to say that anyone could benefit from that same experience, whether its in skiing or any other activity/aspect of life?
It's a really awesome feeling to introduce someone to similar experiences in my opinion. And while making other people happy should never be a motive in doing something, if you have the ability to share such an awesome passion/experience with others... why wouldn't you do it?
I feel like there's a fucking trend(?) in society with people my age who are like "fuck everyone, I'm doing what I want" or everyone is like "only do things for yourself" and other cliche BS I see constantly on social media. And a lot of people who have came in/out of my life take that to heart and block out a lot of potential relationships/experiences.
I don't even know what my point is here. Maybe I'm just butthurt. Who knows.
In my opinion, a majority of people are unhealthily absorbed with social media, but nobody realizes the extent. I'd encourage you to try leaving your phone at home for a day when you go to school or anywhere else. You'll surprise yourself with how many times you'll reach for your phone to realize you don't have it. It becomes far more apparent how much time others are involved in their phones. Not to mention, your personal productivity increases ten fold and you become far less stressed when you aren't constantly linked in. Like, social media is a sick platform for communication and sharing, but it's wickedly oversaturated and nothing you see or read really is relevant to your own life at the end of the day.
To me, the idea of doing things for yourself (which I strongly back) is about refocusing your motivations. Sharing experiences through social platforms becomes a subliminal but insanely driving motivation for doing things. People are motivated to go outside and hike or to make new art or a multitude of other avenues of exploration and self expression, but every day the motivation is less because of curiosity and moreso to fuel an ego. When you're overwhelmed with content from hundreds of thousands of people from the minute you wake up until the last thing you see before you go to bed, you get a narrow-minded perspective that everyone's always active, doing something unique or awesome. It (even if you don't realize it) makes you want to compete with that to show off how you're just as interesting as everyone else. Eventually a major factor in your own activity is to be part of the contest to show off how cool you are, how smart you are, how active you are, etc... It's nice that there's motivation in your life to experience new things and share that, however at the end of the day your picture on instagram or your story on snapchat is a minuscule sliver among a sea of content others see every day. It's hard to really articulate my point, but what I'm trying to say is that doing stuff to post on social media, whether you acknowledge that motivation or not, is not a good reason to do that stuff because it will never be appreciated (it just turns into a waste of time). It's not necessarily always about doing stuff for yourself, but do it because it's true to you are. Without social media, you'll realize quickly enough that you still share your experiences with the people who really matter to you in your life, but not with the time sink involved with online platforms. To me, new experiences and places become more fulfilling when you grasp this. It ignites your personal love for what you do, and I think that's far more important than doing something so that a couple hundred people who you've met a time or two can see a sentence and picture summary of something awesome you did for less than 10 seconds before they scroll a few images down and forget about it.
Also, people on instagram who post to encourage people to do things for themselves are hypocrites. I realize that this is a post on NS which is pretty much social media but I don't really care, not much I can do about that.
Kind of a ramble of a post so hopefully it makes a little sense.
