Maybe she's born with it, maybe it's an Instagram filter...

After writing my last blog, I started to wonder if I’d shared too much. On the whole, the blog has been really well received and has been read by people all over the world (including 3 people in Australia, 4 people in Thailand and 3 people in the UAE, amazingly.) However, I was very open (perhaps too open) about my struggles with mental illness and I’d be foolish to deny that there is a chance this might impact me negatively later in life. Unfortunately, there is still a massive amount of stigma attached to mental ill health and with 80% of employers now apparently googling potential candidates, it does open me up to the possibility of being turned down for opportunities based on one person’s negative interpretation of my public image.

There is a fine balancing act that must be adhered to when ‘exposing’ yourself to the general public online. Social media can be the best marketing tool out there. After all, no one else posts on your blog/twitter/Facebook/Instagram/misc. other social media that I’m not cool enough for, but you. From a potential employer’s perspective, this makes everything you write a much more accurate portrayal of your personality than anything you could possibly say at a job interview.

Of course this isn’t quite true, as we all know that social media content is highly censored. And by censored, I don’t mean posting less expletives! I mean the filters we apply, the perfect selfies that we post that took 19 attempts to get right, the images of the perfect family, the pictures of the date night at that fancy restaurant, the photos of an epic shopping spree. This is what we, the general public, get to see. What we don’t see is the unedited pictures with our three chins (dare you venture to the dreaded recently deleted photos folder), the children who cried for the whole family day out and sat still only long enough for the picture to be taken, the fight that took place before the date night because she took 3 hours to get ready and he’s raging, the bank statements that are hiding in a drawer to avoid confronting the crippling debt that that new Michael Kors bag is the product of*. We only see what others want us to see.

And this is why I decided to post my blog. Because if you scroll down my Facebook timeline and flick through my Instagram photos, what you will see is a largely happy and comfortable life. And those images are not a lie but they certainly don’t tell the whole story. So maybe I have shared too much, and perhaps one day that will come back to haunt me. But isn’t it a refreshing change to know the truth? To see the harsh, unfiltered, uncensored reality in all its glory and to know that maybe, just maybe, you are not alone in this model perfect, contoured cheeks, selfie filled world. 

*These do not apply to me personally. I have no children, my husband is surprisingly patient when it comes to my beauty regime and the closest thing I have to a designer handbag, is the Fulberry (fake Mulberry) I bought for 20 euros from a 'looky looky' man in Marbella.