The Filter

Somewhere along the line, I stopped just 'being' and started 'curating.' I realized that raw footage is messy. It has grain. It has bad lighting. It has awkward silences and insecurities. So, I did what anyone afraid of being rejected does: I slapped a filter on it.

I became the version of myself I thought people wanted to watch. I applied the 'Success' filter: high contrast, high saturation. I became the Assistant Lecturer, the Researcher, the busy guy, the guy who always had it together. I walked into rooms and adjusted my personality like I was adjusting the brightness on a screen—turning up the charm, smoothing out the rough edges, hiding the anxiety in the shadows.

It looked great from the outside. Everyone applauded the image. 'Axel is doing so well,' they’d say. But a filter is a lie. It tells you the sunset was purpler than it actually was; it tells you the smile was wider than it felt.

I spent years editing my life in real-time, terrified that if I dropped the filter, people would see the grain. I thought I was enhancing the picture, but I was just erasing the truth.