Week 5 - 75D/Let’s talk about Instagram
A quick update on the challenge in general before we dive on in to instagram…we are deep into the “same thing/different day” category. Still having no trouble reading or drinking plenty of water every day, but the walking and writing continue to be things I have to really push myself to do.
While it is a challenge to get outside and get my walk in, I really enjoy it! I just wish we weren’t in the middle of a record heatwave. We have had almost 40 days of 100+ temps and its just getting monotonous to either have to get out walking before 7:30am or wait until about 9pm in order to not die of heatstroke. I’m doing it though. I think I might want to do a similar challenge during December/January when I would do a longer walk pretty much any time during the day to see if that does indeed change my perspective or if it would be just as difficult.
The writing is only a struggle because I still feel a little lost on what to be writing about. Still….lots of ideas with no cohesion. I’m torn between figuring out if I should actually be publishing anything on this site or just writing for me and then figuring out what I want to share later. Part of me really wants to build up this site but I think I’m still too mentally attached to my previous “business” audience that I am having trouble disconnecting. I’m thinking too much about what they might want to read and not focusing on the audience I really want to talk too. Sigh. It doesn’t seem like it should be this hard, and in reality I’m probably just overcomplicating it.
Alright….Instagram. It’s been 35 days without it and I have thoughts. Let’s see if I can coherently get them out.
The other day I needed to scroll back through my Facebook feed in order to find something. I found out later that I could actually filter down to the month and year, but it was too late…I was already lost in the fun of what Facebook was like in the early 2010’s.
This was such a fun time in social media world. It was before ads…it was before things went “viral”, it was before rage posting or rage commenting. It was when you were friends with people who you knew in real life and you all talked to each other on this app. I used to post the funniest things…little observations from throughout my day…funny things that happened at work. I never had to worry about offending anyone or saying something that might step on someones toes because probably 95% of my facebook friends were people I knew in my real life and we already had a “bond”. It was a world where you could catch up with people who you didn’t get to see very often or just talk with your friends in a new and fresh way.
Going back and remembering how fun social media used to be made me reflective on what it has transformed into in such a short time. Facebook is now for “old” people….Insta is where influencers are born, Twitter is for “hot” takes and TikTok is smashing everything….even though there is no “connection” element to it.
Back to instagram…why did I decide to add an insta break into my 75 difficult challenge? The main reason is because I was tired of the constant pressure to be producing content. I also was feeling beat down by the distraction element of it. Opening the app and the looking up 45 minutes later wondering where the time went.
Our current political climate doesn’t help. I follow a lot of people on insta who I know through my business and have a good business relationship with. I don’t really want to see their trite political opinions, especially when they are vastly differing than my own. I’m not bothered by the fact that they have their opinions and would gladly have a respectful conversation in person, but there is just something about people sharing knowingly divisive things that just makes me feel sad and disconnected from people which is the opposite of what social media is supposed to be.
I’ve also been wrestling with figuring out exactly what I want to use social media for, specifically Instagram. The platform itself has changed so much over the years with the introduction of stories and now reels, and in addition…my life and my business have changed as well. I long for the days of the Instagram of the past, but those days are gone. I don’t want to become an influencer or work all day and night to produce my own reality TV show, but without doing those things…will I still be able to connect with the people I actually want to connect with through the app?
I didn’t feel like I could accurately think through some of these things while still engaging on the app which is why I’m taking this extended break. In a lot of ways it’s been really great and in a lot of ways it’s sucked…mainly because I miss seeing updates from friends and having conversations in my DM’s.
One huge thing I’ve noticed however, is that the main people I find myself missing are NOT people I know in real life. They are larger, influencer accounts who produce a LOT of content. It’s almost like watching a reality TV show and then stopping mid-season and not knowing what happened.
And after really thinking about, the people I care about seeing from the MOST, are posting less and less on Instagram anyway. I don’t think it is the desire of most everyday regular people to be content creators or influencers so what’s the point right? If whatever they DO post isn’t going to get seen, why go to the trouble to post it in the first place?
I don’t have the answers…and I don’t know where I’ll end up when this challenge is over. I might just whittle down the amount of people that I follow. I might boot off a bunch of people who follow me. I might try to take my account in a totally different direction. I still have some thinking and processing to do. And even though no one reads this blog anyway, I’ll for sure be sharing my thoughts here. Because sometimes, even if no one sees it, it’s important to do things that you care about.
