Today, I am just over six weeks removed from a life on Instagram. Hardly noteworthy, except for one thing: I finally feel like I can begin to articulate why I had to leave. (On second thought, it might be noteworthy that I am distinguishing my life in categories like “on instagram” and “off instagram” – which is probably more about me than anything else but still, it says something that I even think of it that way.)
I was not a super early adopter of the ‘gram (as someone perpetually behind every single trend in the world, I am not a super early adopter of anything). I got my first smartphone a few weeks before my first daughter was born in late 2012 and started an Instagram account that day, if my recall is correct (but that was six children ago so let’s say circa fall of 2012 and call it close enough). And it was fun. I loved the filters and the vignettes and the interaction with the 17 other people I knew and loved in real life.
And then, over the last decade of public writing, the audience grew. Very slowly, but more than 17 people eventually opted in to see what I was sharing in that space. I wish I could pinpoint when it stopped being fun, when it started to feel like pressure –maybe around the same time I was told to grow my platform before I could publish a book, but honestly, I think it was before that. I was a frog in boiling water, too excited about the followership inching its way up – from 400 to 900 to 1000 to 5000 to 10,000, on my way to “being someone” – to notice what the whole experience was really doing to me.
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