INSTA WORTHY; the truth behind the photos. 

The feed. The filter. The caption. The hypocrisy.

Being heavily reliant on Instagram myself, both for this blog and for a side job of social media management, I felt I needed to speak about something laying heavily on my heart.

Often, trying to grow this blog and brand myself through social media platforms such as Instagram has been very taxing. Its almost like taking three steps forward with each post and taking those steps right back by watching my following deplete. I am so grateful for every comment from friends, coworkers or even random people I don’t know telling me that they read my blog. It seriously fills my heart with so much joy because this is something that I genuinely love to do. I recently realized that in pursuing this blog and remaining passionate for this is my own doing. I should never let something like followers influence whether or not I continue this.

Scrolling through my blog insta feed on a normal day sounds like this, “wow that’s such a great picture. How does she get so many followers? Am I doing something wrong? Maybe I could change my feed.” This is BEYOND exhausting. This is a huge form of comparison and I know a lot of people can relate to this. Instagram is a highlight reel of success and your following is very telling to how your content comes across. It makes me sad when I think a picture of mine wouldn’t be “liked” (in the literal sense in this case) just because of the aesthetic. I’ve even let this notion of perfection seep into my own personal view of myself and I’m pretty damn tired of it.

Don’t get me wrong, aesthetic, photography, and fashion are something that I lay immense passion in as well.

My point is not that you should sacrifice your personal style when using social media or manipulating your content to take the road less traveled. My point is to remember who you are. Getting caught up in the world of Instagram is very easy to do. But, I also get a lot of inspiration from other bloggers. And I also have connected with so many people that I otherwise wouldn’t have if not for this platform. It can be uniting and a wonderful display of the corners of your life.

It feels like everyday something new is happening within these platforms. Updates and new trends for the feed are sometimes so hard to keep up with. Growing up in my late teens with Instagram being a very real thing was fun at first. It helped me realize that I love to take photos, I love photos being taken of me (even the imperfect ones) and I love to edit photos. Being so “out there” with myself and my content can be daunting when I think of those who could be reading this. Not that its groundbreaking by any means, but it is me on public display.

My main goal is to remain 100% true to myself. Regardless of scrolling through famous bloggers with similar content to mine. Regardless of massive trends on social media, I’ll still remain confident. And regardless of judgement I will continue to put myself out there. Having this outlet has been so rewarding personally. It’s allowed my writing to evolve and its allowed me to release my creative know-how. I challenge anyone reading who feels these pressures for the perfect shot, caption and edit to remind yourself that no matter the one picture, people remember you for what you bring to the table. Be a nice person and work hard for what you want and I believe your blessings will come to you.

For now, I’ll be working on being more transparent on the internet. Here are some photos I didn’t think would be popular enough for whatever reason to post on my feed and will be up on my Instagram today. These photos are not to attract attention or sympathy for the fact that I don’t think highly of myself. In fact it’s the opposite. I’m going to encourage the imperfect because when I look at these pictures, they’re now beautiful to me. With every “fat” photo and every hair out of place or imperfect pose- it’s me. This is simply to put everything on display I was hiding from the world because of my coveted belief that I could present myself as perfect on social media.

Check the captions to see why I chose not to post that photo. I must say, writing those captions was really tough to genuinely let people know what I actually saw when I looked at myself in a photo. It hurts to see myself type those things out but it also opened my eyes up a lot. I challenge anyone else to post a photo that they liked but only saw their flaws.

Thanks for reading & as always- stay true.

XOXO,

Chasing Transparency.

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