Lifestyle Blogs vs Reality

I have always had a fantasy world going on in my head, like a movie, when scrolling through the beautiful feeds of Instagram. I see people on the beach with their matching hand bag and towel whilst having a fruity drink and soaking in the sun in Bora Bora. They're smiling, laughing, and acting like this entirely staged image was completely natural, while I lay in bed, feet aching from standing for 10 hours straight.

How fake can social media make the world "you can easily attain" look so good?

As a 90's baby, I had grown up with the development of the internet, key word with, and all the different applications of the present day. I remember how Instagram alone used to just be for pictures of real people and it was a "for fun" activity. Now it has become a "who has the better life" competition that we all know is there, but rather not disclose out loud.

Life styles on Instagram seem so unnatural to me now. The normal 9-5 is becoming obsolete with the advances made in potential profits the internet can make.

The question I have now is: what should I do? Grow up into what I saw in my parents and adolescents which was get an education and work 9-5 or find some niche of the internet to plant my seed and watch it grow? I am honestly terrified of the internet because I see these ads of "real" people making money so easily while I break my back doing some hard freaking work and what do I see? Nothing really.

I am scared.

I want to integrate into this magnificent world of digital space and do my part and make my mark but starting my research, I realize I know next to nothing.

While I previously thought I was a computer wiz, terms like affiliate marketing and PPC and web hosting are thrown at me. Picture the scrawny, unaesthetic kid on one side of the court against the school bullies on the other side in court dodge ball. Yeah, I am the scrawny kid. It's like an episode of Ned's Declassified: School Survival Guide (shout out to the homies who understand the reference).

There should be an integration point of some kind for people like me and those who can relate. All we can do is cast out our line and wait for our time.

Right now I see nothing but working harder not smarter, at least where I live and I hope I can find a change. Hard physical labor, living pay check to paycheck, relational stress, emotional trauma, addiction, and more can be seen through the old ways of income that my parents and their parents had went through. I want to start so desperately and they make it seem all rainbows and butterflies in the digital world and that "it's so easy, just start" and you're like b*tch where? Or at least I am.

Where do I even start? Instructions please!