Earlier this week I put up a ‘teaser trailer’ to this blog post on Instagram #socialmediamarketingguru #soprofessional . It was an ‘inspirational’ picture of the world’s best notebook who’s cover simply said: ‘I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing with my life’. It was one of my most liked posts since I joined Instagram last year.

So, why did people like it so much? Because I’m an insightful voice of a generation with her finger on the pulse I hear you cry? (yes, partly) but ALSO cos it’s bloody well true of sodding LOADS of us.

So why do we insist on pretending? Of all my nearest and dearest, I can count on ONE hand the amount of people who truly, deep down really have their shit together, and most of those people are over 50.

So we do we all pretend that one teeny square of instagram happiness is a true reflection of our whole lives? “My life is so perfect because my boyfriend is a dreamboat” (apart from those 6 times he cheated on me) “my life is so perfect because I’m on the beach in dubai” (…that my parents are paying for) “My life is so perfect because I got the job” (…after 45 applications, 44 rejections and 10 of the cringest interviews of my life) Why do we always airbrush the reality? When we all know that sometimes, life can be a little bit crap.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to see each other happy and proud of things you’ve achieved or even just content with your lot, but we’ve gotta stop pretending that’s the be all and end all. We’ve got to stop presenting ourselves as edited, photoshoped versions of reality and start bloody well keeping it real.

The crux of what I’m tryna say is… we’ve all gotta start being a bit kinder to each other, lads!

You bought a house, great! It’s a huge achievement, well done…but you’re not better than anyone else for having one, you’re not more capable and more able or more hardworking than those who still scrape by with the rent every month. And get real, who died and left you that deposit? How big is that looming mortgage? From which elderly relative did you scrounge that ‘vintage table’ because you couldn’t afford a new one?

You’re having a baby! We’re delighted. But we don’t JUST need to see soft focused airbrushed strolls of you hand in hand with the taglines #happyfamilies #when2become3. Casually forgetting the wake up calls at 10, 12, 2, 4 and 5am, the time you had YouTube ‘which way round do nappies go’ and the terror when the midwife handed you a real life human and you thought ‘SHIT, I had 9 months to grow a person and I have no idea what I do now’?

These are the little victories, these are the stories we should be more willing to share. I look at my social media and am proud of the posts that showed life falls apart….that time where I just drank a bottle of wine with a straw when I was SO unemployed, or the time that when I properly stacked it sober and cut my knee outside Armani on 5th Avenue, New York, or that I’m writing this post in my ‘house outfit’ (old take that t-shirt with a big gravy stain on it that I’m pretty sure isn’t even from this week!!!) You’ve all got a bloody house outfit that you look like crap in and it lives on the ‘messy chair’ and don’t bloody pretend you don’t!

I’m not talking about moping attention seeking vibes, I’m talking about just getting a bit real. Just sometimes, maybe once, be brave enough to share the shitty times and find the comedy in it, be a darling and make everyone else realise that life can be poo. Cos in the immortal words of Troy off of High School Musical “we’re all in this together”…and the sooner we start proving to each other we all go through the crap times, the happier we’ll all be!