Validating My Need to Blog

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will
ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without
caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine
times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. "
CS Lewis
--
I always felt like I would be submitting to some cliche of a lonely, desperate-to find-myself idealist if I had a blog. But as much as I find myself trying to avoid the cultural norms of the day, the more that I feel like I semi-consciously submit to the masses. The quote above from C.S. Lewis hits it on the head. A struggle I have always faced was how important it is for me to stay original. If I go the easy way, am I becoming the predictable poser that overwhelmingly seems to exist among my peers?

The answer is, who really cares or notices but me? I am who I am at this stage of the game. So maybe I've started a blog. Maybe I get sucked into the (sometimes) wicked world of social media from time to time. But in addition to craving individualism, I also crave community, which social media can alleviate.
The truth is that of the many realizations and lessons that I have learned from the novice soft rock of fragility that was my 20s -- I am authentic. I stick to my principles, even when it hurts. It has not always been evident as to how essential staying true to myself is relative to living the healthy minded life that I want to live. But if it hasn't happened already, then no force is going to break through my solid rock of ethics and values now.
So whether or not I am succumbing to the masses or not, is really irrelevant. Adapting never made anyone a fraud. My originality runs far deeper than  any appropriately placed hashtag.