"Everyone's got their own words of unpaid advice" but "what do they know?"
Last month, I uploaded a vlog announcing my return to Instagram after 4 months, and sharing my thoughts and experiences without it. The whole time I was active, I was in Japan, sharing my trip (from the moment I woke up to bidding my friends good night through the digital entity). For a while, it was nice to somewhat "reconnect" with everyone, scrolling through their feeds to see what I've missed and then I realised that I was slowly becoming too consumed by it again. It took my time, and attention and I became disconnected.
I never really cared about how much likes or views I get on my posts, my intention is always to share. I might have 700 followers, and still only get 10 likes on the photo that I actually love the most, and that's okay. I got somewhat paranoid exposing parts of my life to people who might have the intention to damage what I've been trying to build for myself. The comments that were left on my blog kept haunting me, and that really ate me up.
These were the last of my Instagram:
At the beginning of 2015, I successfully deleted over 3000 photos on my Instagram as a way to start fresh. I didn't upload much until the third month when I finally felt like I was ready to share where I had been. During that period, I took 21 days off from work to travel to Penang, Phuket, and Singapore. All in an attempt to start over and, to reclaim parts of me that I've lost. Instead, I lost something I least expected.
I've been in this cycle for almost 3 years where I would try to leave something I knew was toxic, where I would go away to find myself, or I kept trying to start over. And in the process of doing this, I would always lose one friend after another. At first, it was so difficult to fathom but I grew older and I began to understand why it happened. Yet, life kept moving forward so I could either stay and catch up later on, or I could sail with it.
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Instagram is pretty toxic. It always feels like we spend too much time trying to curate a post that could please our followers. We spend too much time editing, filtering and making our online world perfect. We screenshot someone's post and share it with our friends on Whatsapp, and we talk shit about it. We even sometimes talk shit about them in our heads while scrolling through their feeds. We seek for validation, and instant esteem boost from people we barely knew. We abuse our anonymity to damage someone's reputation because their post annoys you.
On the brighter side, Instagram is a wonderful platform. I love that it's a platform for information and because I'm a visual person, I like that there's always something to learn. It brings you closer to the things that you love. Although I have no access to my personal account, I still spend some time scrolling through the app to cheer myself up. Have you seen how many animal posts there are on the 9gag account? OH PLEASE, I WANT MORE! And that's all I do, I watch animals and other general stuff on Instagram, and that alone can be satisfying.
* * * *
I feel safer that I don't have Instagram or Facebook. I still get a lot of eye-rolling from people every time I told them that I have neither of that because it didn't make sense to them. Sometimes, it makes me so proud of myself for being the only one whose hands are free to lend an immediate help or two. I still sit at the dinner table, seeing my parents on their phones and not communicating with us when they could yet, they questioned, what changed? I had travelled with my parents, and it made so disappointed when I took them to all these places, yet their eyes were stuck on the screen of their phone. Our Sundays may be spent in the family room, but I would be surrounded by a mother who keeps refreshing her Facebook timeline, a father who keeps refreshing that big 2 game on his phone, brothers yelling "why!" every time the wifi connection gets cut off while they're in the middle of Mobile Legend, and a sister who keeps taking one selfie after another for her boyfriend. This is the new normal.
But what does it mean for me to be away from it all?
It means I have time. A lot of it, which is weird because everyone of us gets the same exact amount of time. 24 hours a day, 60 minutes per hour, 60 seconds per minute and it goes on, and it's all the same but it seems like I have more now.
If you're new to this blog, and we haven't been properly introduced. Here are some quick facts:
- I am 26. I have 5 cats (and 3 stray kittens).
- I work most of the time and sleep for the remaining of the time I have left.
- I am an Introvert, struggling with Anxiety Depressive Disorder, which means I love staying at home.
- I don't really have a lot of friends (left).
So I have plenty of time now, and I don't really like to go out. What do I do?
I read, paint and watch so many movies and tv-series, sometimes it feels like I am wasting so much of my youth. It's boring but it keeps me distracted, and it's easy and I have no one to please (well, except my parents because you know, 26, single, and what the heck am I doing with my life, right?) But it's not that terrible really. It does make me wonder how I was able to spend so much money on expensive food, or coffee before because right now, I barely got my life together.
Alright, to be honest, this post is a type of procrastination. I wasn't very sure what I wanted to post but I hope there's a point somewhere.
We all should really take our eyes off our phones sometimes. Enjoy the view, take deep breaths, drink plenty of water and read books. Also, wash your hands.
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