I have always been a writer. My first poems scribbled with crayons in my coloring books. I have been holding myself back, deeply concerned about how others perceive me and my journey.

Over the last few years I have slowly reduced and then finally eradicated my social media presence. It came with the sacrifice of no longer being a part of the collective, but so many of us aren’t anyway. I have my birthday largely forgotten by the majority of people who have known me, but the people who remember make it remarkably more meaningful. It means these people cared enough to make the effort to remember on their own. (I count having the forethought to put it in their calendars as making the effort.)

As I began to address each day with a blank canvas rather than the expectations of presenting some sort of categorized life to the masses (who never cared that I was there), I began to realize what I really found joy in. I was never inauthentic in how I presented myself on the internet, but I felt restricted to a tiny lens of myself.

Today I begin a new project. Today I begin to write for myself again. Any thoughts, unrestrained, told through my personal dramatic flair and put in my online journal. So what if nobody ever reads my stories and recognizes the brilliance of my ideas—the internet remembers everything.