Where I'm at
What to share, Instagram and all the feels
It’s hard to write these letters after such a long break. I didn’t intend for it to be that long, or actually, I didn’t intend for it to be at all. I just wasn’t sure if I should continue with these letters as it felt like I was writing about the same thing over and over again. On the other hand, I want to write about things that occupy my mind, things that come up in my morning journaling, things I have trouble letting go. I might obsess a little about something for a while, until something else will come and take over my mind. This is who I am, I guess, and this is what I want to be sharing.
And lately my mind is busy with the online life, with social media (in my case it is only Instagram) and what it means for me. To tell you the truth I don’t know yet what it means, but if my Instagram account was hacked today, I wouldn’t start another one. This is where I’m at right now.
I’m mostly bored by Instagram. There are few accounts which still give me some joy, there are the connections I’ve made there and I wouldn’t want to lose, but overall it’s just boring. Everyone is busy with pleasing the big angry algorithm and does the same trick (the newest one is showing a book edges side, putting some words describing the book around it and than turning it cover side to the camera). I just can’t stand it anymore. Also there’s the music, the same song, over and over again, not only on reels and stories, but also on photo posts. Why? Why can’t we watch pictures in silence anymore?
So there’s boredom and there’s annoyance, but there’s also some joy, so it’s not easy to know what to do about it. There are days I want to delete my account there and there are days I can’t imagine my life without it.
Right now I feel like disconnecting from the world, hiding under the blanket and reading books. I don’t want to talk to people, see anyone (apart from my husband), be anything else than a reader and cat cuddler (not a word, probably, but it works for me).
It’s the last day of my holidays and I’m tired. Maybe from thinking too much about it all? I don’t know, but I’m so very tired that it’s hard to get up in the mornings. I’m so tired that I want to cry every day. I’m tired of trying to be someone who is not me. I’m just so very tired.
Hi Anna Maria, your post was recommended to me in an email from Substack. The first recommendation in that essay was for Marloes de Vries' essay, 'Is Instagram holding me back?'. She is not saying quite the same thing you are, but it is about Instagram fatigue. So I hope it can be a tiny bit of a consolation to you that more people are feeling it. A lot of my own creator friends are also feeling it. I feel it.
I clicked on your post because, like you, I have been feeling tired and unsure of what to share. I haven't posted anything publicly on Instagram since February. Ironically, I've been trying to find the right words on the topic to put them in an issue of my Substack newsletter, because I've been thinking about how content and the social aspect, the community aspect, of social media has changed for almost a year now.
So I feel you. I also recognise the feeling of wanting to disconnect from the world and even the crying and the not wanting to do the whole thing of going into the world. I hope you have people close by you can talk to about that, because it is an awful and lonely way to feel - and something to take seriously. I'm sending you a virtual hug. I've subscribed, but I hope you don't take that as another pressure on yourself to create content. Some seasons of life our life are just more inward-facing than others. <3
I can relate to some of this. Books and cat cuddling is very much what I prefer to do. Hope you feel less tired soon.