Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Good Night, and Good Luck, Julia Allison.

Those in the media know at least a little bit about Julia Allison.

Or a lot, given that she spent most of her twenties "life-casting", meaning chronicling every personal and professional detail of her life via her blog and a site she started with her besties called Non-Society.

Through those years, Allison gained a lot of notoriety (most of it negative, especially from sites like Gawker and other ones that parodied Non-Society), finally managing to land the July '08 cover of -- and a story in-- one of my favorite magazines, Wired.

I admit, even I was hooked on JA for awhile, constantly checking up on her because the girl's bravado was almost too hard to ignore. But I like living my life as it happens, so I stopped clicking in on hers.

After a good few years of forgetting about Julia Allison, this morning I came across a tidbit announcing that she has decided to take a leave from the internet and blogging about her life for all the world to read, see and -- inevitably -- judge.

Apparently, what she thought she wanted in her early twenties might not be what her 29-year-old self wants.

Thus, it seems Julia Allison has finally come to a crossroads -- or at least a late-twenties life crisis.

While Gawker and other such sites are reveling in her apparent failure, I can only feel sad for the gal, someone who wanted so much and, perhaps, ended getting too much of it.

This brings up the interesting topic of how much of yourself one should expose to the public and where one needs to draw personal boundaries in order to keep sane and -- most of all -- normal. Not a caricature of yourself that requires constant effort to maintain, but the actual person you are. Being a caricature of yourself all the time can lead you to a lonely place.

Even I have written more personal, serious things for this blog that I thought through twice and decided not to post because it was too close for comfort. And anything of that sort that has made it on here was posted because, at the time, I truly felt my experience could help other people.

So, in closing, I wish nothing but the best for Julia Allison -- after all, everyone deserves to be happy.

And, just like I believe when it comes to personal style, less really is more.





* Photo property of Julia Allison and is used solely for commentary purposes

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home