Goodbye Instagram

It's been years since I am active of Instagram. Ever since I made my profile there, it became my favorite Social media platform. I felt like I could finally express myself through photos since I was never really that good at expressing myself with words. There was one point in my life, few years ago, when I would take photos every day, edit and share them, I did a bunch of research on how to gain followers and stuff like that. It was interesting for a while but then I got tired of it, deleted most of my posts, unfollowed a bunch of people and also deleted majority of my followers. I gave up on this idea of "growing my Insta account" and kept it more private. I also posted whatever I wanted, not checking if it fits into my theme, color scheme...

I enjoyed that fresh approach to expressing myself and it was fun for a while. But I guess something in me changed because it's been a while since I don't enjoy Instagram anymore. There's probably few reasons for it and I won't even try to point them all out because it all comes to the fact that Instagram is not my "happy place" anymore. I guess the more you work on yourself, the more you learn and grow as a person, the more you trust yourself, the less you need to be into other peoples business and search for some kind of approval or recognition online. I'm not saying that everyone thinks or feels this way - some people have a healthy relationship and boundaries with Social media but I know for a fact I was almost addicted to scrolling through my feed and search feed and had that fear of missing out.

I'm not saying that I'm some kind of spiritual person who magically has everything figured out, I'm far from that and still a mess pretty much but I am finally ready to detach and let go of this one thing that no longer serves me. Every time I get on Instagram, I get annoyed, I don't even look at people's posts with attention because honestly, I don't care. And yes, there is a lot of inspiration and useful things out there and for a long time Instagram was a place where I would look for that when I needed it but now, I don't do that anymore. So overall, every log in ends up with me feeling mentally drained. It's almost like I can feel my energy going down. I know I can just continue with spending even less time there or take some time off completely but when it comes to (former) "addictions", I am that all or nothing type of person. As I mentioned, I feel this urge to delete my profile and just end that part of my life, lol.

I don't know if spending less time on Instagram this month and spending more time outside, in nature, being more active, reading, getting back into writing posts on Steemit where I feel like I belong to, like I've found my "tribe" also led to this point but I've been enjoying myself and my life a lot more lately and I have no intention to fall into the same trap, like many times before, of consuming other people's lives through the screen and wasting my time and energy. A handful of people I do enjoy following are barely even active, I guess those are the people who live the most authentic, interesting lives after all. :) Also, my interractions on there are so superficial and almost have no meaning to me unlike here, on Steemit, where there's a lot more meaningful interactions, shared opinions and experiences... Maybe I do appreciate expression through words more than I thought.

So with all this being said, I am just happy that I no longer feel an attachment to Instagram (it feels weird saying this but that's honestly how I felt) and it is so liberating. At the end of the day, it's really not that big of a deal even though writing an entire post about it might seem like it is, because if I ever want to get back to it at some point in my life, I can just make another one. I understand that for many people Social media is used with a defined purpose, to stay in touch with family (still have Facebook profile for that) or for business purposes and that is great and I totally support it, I know few people who really managed to grow their private businesses and hobbies through Instagram.