Sidelined: The Price Of Convenience | by Jaylin Leslie | Apr, 2023

I seldom promote my book Seasons. I deeply missed the days before I started to promote myself all in the name of self-love, and I guess I rebelled in some ways. I missed writing as if no one would ever read it.

I remember feeling as though, if the work was excellent and I focused on creating something meaningful, it would be recognized in time.

I was listening to Airplanes by b.o.b and Hailey Williams from one of my favorite high school bands, Paramore, and I started thinking about the mental and emotional state that I was in when I would stream the song during my teenage years.

Melodies have always had a funny way of reminding me of the emotions that came along with them at the time in which I would play the song.

I was reminded of me wishing that I could fly away, and not into some scientific and metaphoric kind of mental paradise, but in the sense of travel, leaving behind the things that carried me far away from my shared bedroom with my sister and the girl who felt so overlooked and misunderstood.

As I listened to the lyrics, I began to remind myself of the beauty in small beginnings, and I found myself in a profound sense of appreciation for the here and now, even though I was growing.

For a while, I thought I was sabotaging myself, refusing to push myself and my products, but I found it to be a thing in which I sought to savor the moments on my way to success.

I always felt like my success was inevitable, and I savored the little things in my life because those things always made me happy. I enjoyed time with my family, and I enjoyed spending time with those who I love. I even like daydreaming and using my imagination to envision future possibilities.

I recently sat in a $200k+ Maybach and felt no different. I was still the same girl in my cargo and New Balance. I noticed this about myself, I appreciated the little luxuries and comforts, but it would always be a day at Barnes and Noble and a walk in the park that bestowed my greatest joys.

I considered the aggression of convenience, how it was the convenience of the American lifestyle that took the joy from the beauty in mere existence, and how it was the convenience that we traded for our happiness.

Consider dating, I wrote about how dating coaches were ruining relationships, and I still stand by this. Let’s consider the fact that when we meet someone in person, what we see is mostly what we get. There is no room for gaslighting and confusion because we met this person in this state. There’s no masking, no pretending, or no deluding of a personality. Just plain and simple.

But now, in the name of convenience to an easy way out of our self-reflection and patiently relying on God’s timing, we have dating apps. Apps where we can sit online all day phishing for the perfect profile in hopes of meeting the ideal person — and this is precisely what dating coaches do. They paint an idea of a perfect person in your mind so that you will subconsciously keep viewing their content in hopes of healing more, bettering yourself to meet someone who doesn’t exist.

Now, let’s also consider self-esteem — I believe in having a healthy sense of self-esteem, you will have to be able to look over your track record and feel vetted. I’ve noticed that we no longer have to do the leg work because we have ample technological resources. This, of course, feels convenient, but what it does is trick our minds into thinking that we are successful when, deep down, we know we haven’t put the work in to attain the results that we desire, so, of course, now we need therapy to fix problems that convenience has caused.

And lastly, let’s peer into the writing industry. When I first began writing, I had so many doubts because being a writer was rare. No one was studying journalism to garner any real popularity or mass following. You wrote because you loved writing, which was such a taboo thing. It was as if you said you wanted to be a writer in a world where everyone sought more glamorized careers. It’s like an old record played out with slim possibility.

But, because writing has become more accessible, and thanks to AI, people no longer write because they have something to say regarding their life and experiences. Oh no, the world is too exploitative for that. People are now writing because they have an audience to cater to.

When I started writing on my blog, I had viewers in 7+ countries. They didn’t know me, and I didn’t know them. I would write every day about whatever was on my mind in hopes that it could inspire someone and lift the spirits of someone in a similar space. Consider it paralyzing comfort, but looking back; I felt as though I was able to garner an audience because I was writing as if no one would ever read it. Back then, writing was merely a source of authenticity.

Today, we no longer write for ourselves but for others; perhaps that was merely the cost of followers. It was no longer about you. It was about the audience. In my previous article about fame, we, too, had an exciting way of being sidelined once we received recognition.