Bad music, dentists and social media.

I'm a Gemini and of course I don't believe in the horoscope, but then again the personality characteristics seem to always be right on point for me... In every single way, so maybe I do believe in it after all.

• I love healthy food and love junk food.

• I listen to Robert Plant and Linkoban (do.not.check.it.on.spotify.saveyourself.).

• Visiting dentists scares me to death and I greatly enjoy having my teeth checked and fixed.

There's no logic to me and I learnt to just go with the flow, but one thing was bothering me - social media. In past I would post like crazy for some time and then I would go off Instagram and FB because it felt desperately overwhelming. Only just recently I found a few reasons why and none of them was my Gemini business. Of course there was stuff from past involved (you see, I dig deep!) but I also followed the wrong people, the wrong businesses, spend there too long or too little etc.

The most important of what I discovered though was that showing your vulnerable and authentic side on social media is a game changer.

One day, after having slightly enough of the perfect pictures of those perfect people who constantly work out, eat pretty and preach, I posted this:

Hello there, this is me and this is what I do. And this is the mess I’m yet to clean tonight. We were filming for my Wanderlust 2019 classes today - the sun shone, the paints flowed, the child napped (for 2.5h oh.my. god. in that Janice voice) - perfectly perfect. What you can’t see on this photo though is my anxiety that hit me this morning like a fully loaded school bus. Stress, deadlines, never ending to do lists, constant feeling of having to catch up plus the stinker of a notion of not being enough and not doing enough. Sometimes I can breath through it and let go, relax and start dancing with Zosia to Madonna’s Borderline again. Other times though it ain’t that easy. Filming helped today, even though there was an enthusiastic toddler hanging around when I was doing my prep. Now I am off to finish the day with Great Expectations, but... how on earth do you creative business people cope with all the ideas you have - how do you get over the fact that... no babe, you won’t be able to bring them all to life. How? HOW?

What happened after that blew my social-media-unsure mind.

I've got comments, messages and emails from lots of people who could relate. From women who run businesses, who are mothers or who are single but overwhelmed, looking for their path or who just felt like they could relate and wanted to give me some support.

Seriously, people, what's wrong with you!?

Wasn't today's world supposed to be a sad and lonely place? Weren't we humans about to turn cold and drained of sympathy with our money-making orientated minds? Hold on there, because you are making me think that actually social-media has got a huge potential to be a great place!

And I sort of knew it already, that people can be supportive and loving online, because every year on Wanderlust people in the classroom would give me a proof of this in the most wonderful way. But here, after this post, when I opened myself so fully... it hit me like it never did before.

Thanks to this post I got to know women who I share a lot with. I realised that showing the true you and talking honestly may seem scary to start with but brings lots and lots of goodness. I don't want to go off Instagram anymore because there's just too much goodness. After a wonderful conversation in the comments under that post I put together a few conclusions.

And these are for you (if you are like me):

If you are creative, if you do a lot of social media for yourself and maybe for work, if self-comparison knocks on your door from time to time, if you sometimes feel blue and overwhelmed by your to-do lists, if you feel like at work your competition is always just that one step ahead, like there's never enough time to do everything... then print it out babe, stick it on your wall and read often:

1. Having a bad day is alright. Bad days come and go, and then come back again. Life is not all glitter and unicorns, even if IG photos are. 2. It’s good to do nothing and not feel guilty about it. In fact it’s when we let our brain rest that we get the most creative and brilliant ideas. So staring at a wall from time to time can do magic. 3. Too many ideas in one’s head is not fun though. Brain-dump can be the saviour. Keeping a notebook on your bedside cabinet and writing things/ideas down whenever it gets busy in your head is a good idea. And no, I don’t mean making more to-do lists, because... 4. It’s good to accept that not all ideas will come to life. Some will fade, some won’t excite you anymore and for others you won’t have any time because... 5. There is a set number of hours in a day, and that’s same for everyone. This is why we must prioritise and do one thing at a time. Little steps is the way to roll. 6. And if there’s something you really want to do but days seem to end too quickly then maybe think of creative ways how you could squeeze that one more thing in. To me it would be doing more drawing in my messy sketchbook but I keep all the supplies in the studio upstairs. So some of you suggested that I bring a few supplies to where I spend the most of my day (downstairs with Zosia). This is such simple solution but allows me to reach out for my sketchbook whenever I can (for instance when Duggee is on!!). 7. Social media are great and wonderful, but too much of a good thing... That is why maybe don’t bring your phone to the bedroom. Or don’t reach out for it for a few hours in the evening. There is so much good on IG and FB, but even though other peoples’ lifes and posts are great and interesting, there must be a time that you spend just with yourself. You can set a down-time for apps on iPhone, which is what I’ve done a while ago...So if I reach out for my phone between 21 and 8, I am reminded that this is not a good time to get involved in anything.

And don’t think I’m all that clever... I’m work in progress, aren’t we all? All that you can see above comes from you. Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts and making me think about stuff. Now I'm off to indulge in my kale smoothie & Pringles combo and you... oh, go on, check Linkoban on Spotify.