Being yourself.

So this is a journal entry from creative writing, and I just felt like sharing it with you.

Being yourself is a battle every day. Society pressures you to be someone else. We are being bombarded with ads showing us how we should look, telling us that in order to be "cool" or "fit in" we have to conform to the mold they have created. Only a limited number of brave souls dare to challenge the world's idea of perfection. No one is perfect. If we were, we would never learn or grow because we would never make mistakes. And trying to become "perfect" according to the laws of society is a never-ending black hole of self-loathing and despair.

I know this because I've been there. It was only when I freed myself from conformity's clutches that I was able to become myself. Having said that, let me explain. Becoming yourself is a continuous process. You don't just wake up one morning knowing exactly who you are. You are a project that never stops adjusting and changing, or maybe even being completely demolished and restarted. You choose who you want to be, and you shouldn't allow anyone else to pressure you into becoming someone else.

For writers, it is especially important to at least get a general idea of who they are as individuals. It will reflect itself in their work. If they are busy trying to conform to somebody else's style, their work is no longer original; it is a copy, a fake. Just like the writer will become a copy of the person they are trying to imitate. You can take the best qualities of the people you admire and combine them into yourself, but don't become an echo.