hello!
i have been blogging for 10 years, since 2015, on a website i ambitiously, optimistically, enthusiastically, lovingly named 16til26*. it is time to close up! because i am 26! i wrote my last post, acknowledgments, that you can read here. it is mostly thank yous and reflections and i wrote it at 3am a couple months ago, sobbing because i couldn’t really imagine writing outside of that container. it has been a friend to me since i was a kid. we actually grew up together.
what has eased this transition was imagining something new, which is now this website and my renewed youtube channel, and a reinvigorated approach to sharing online. in this process, i've taken long meandering walks– staring at moss and small leaves, looking for birds in the branches, walking next to stray cats. i have new friends, new places to be. i sit on my couch and tangle and untangle yarn. i play with color. i go out dancing with my loved ones. i live in a new place. i'm getting to know the shadows, and where the sun patches peak in at different times of day. i listen to the cars drive by; in the afternoon, if the skies are clear, they conspire to all together become some kind of mirror ball with the sun– bouncing and shmearing quick streaks of light around my bedroom. i talk to my stuffed animals before i sleep. i talk to my journal first thing in the morning.
my real-ass, concrete, material, analog life is filled with possibility. it is filled with laughter and friends and sincerity and anticipation and joy. it is surprising, it is generative, it is soft, it is warm, it is loving, it is malleable, it is evolving.
i think teenage me would be pleased to hear that the internet is no longer the primary place where i can find visions of my future. the internet is no longer the primary "place” where i can feel and experience possibility.
it has fed me images for over a decade of what my life could look like, what it should look like. who i can be, who i can befriend, where i can go, what i can do, what i can say, how i can act, what i can wear, what i can buy. i thought that perhaps the more i poured into it, the more it could tell me who i am. but the internet is not our friend. these platforms are not our friends. these platforms need us more than we need them. our friends, our interests, our neighborhood, our loved ones, our creations… those have the real power to reflect back to us who we are.
i have grown up, aching, to see myself as others see me. i think i found myself at points wanting or waiting for some third party to just tell me. tell me i’m bad. tell me i’m good. tell me i’m done. tell me it’s all going to be ok from here. absolve me of the guilt! tell me who i am. finally! i have spent so many years searching.
when i started my blog at 16, it was an essential tool for many years to prove to myself that i had beliefs, i had values, i had a process, i had a complex inner world that others would be lucky to take part in if they understood me well enough.
around the time i turned 20, i began sharing less, experiencing more. i finally grew to understand that i am more than my own depictions online. and i do not have to avoid the internet to embody this belief. i am renegotiating my relationship with the internet, a place where i can play, and not where i prove. a place where i can connect with others’ digital gardens of their own creation. just a piece of me and not all of me. an animal part of me cannot even believe that i have to make this distinction. the soft animal that runs and sings with the trees and feels the sand between my toes.
in this most recent video, i lightheartedly work out what growing up online has felt like, and particularly what blogging has felt like. since roughly 12 to 16 to 20 to now. i touch on the strange puberty of socializing on facebook, what processing publicly as a teenager felt like, withdrawing from the online sphere to let things be messy, and my intentions moving forward. my place on the internet can be whatever i want it to be! how exciting!
i like to think of myself as a case study because i know i am just at the very cusp of a generation that does not know adolescence without the internet. i have played on the cul de sac, biked around my neighborhood, befriended my neighbors. and i also know intimately the feeling that perhaps i am always being watched, perhaps i am always wrong, perhaps i need to explain myself all the time.
16til26* is an archive, a strange dance of perception, and a reminder that i will always be myself no matter how much is documented or written down. i have lived through more than i can allude to in words because of course i have. my friends hold pieces of me, more real and alive, in their memory and their hearts than anything i can conjure in images online.
i know not everyone has this experience of growing up online but i love to talk about it because it is mine. i hope we all take part in a physical world that feels meaningful and deep and sincere and soulful and special– in a way that makes you want to shout it from the rooftops (or broadcast to hundreds of people online?). but i moreso hope that feeling remains with you constantly– tender, private, sustaining, nourishing, quiet, and warm. i hope it holds your body close and reminds you that you are real and you are loved.
i love you!
izzy