I deleted my instagram & yes I'm okay

Reporting from life off the grid, it's really lovely here.

In my car before therapy on Tuesday, I said an unceremonious BYE to Instagram. I didn’t pause to read the notices about new time-wasting prevention features, for why when I was about to wield the largest of them all?

Permanently delete account. A sweet relief I wasn’t expecting rushed in.

Unshared (with IG) moments from the past two weeks: beach time, hammock time, outdoors with Ghostie time, and Josh surprising me by turning my doodles into stickers for our new brand.

Even after not using Instagram for large stretches of time last year save for fits and bursts, I realized how much of my mind and energy the app still infiltrated.

No matter how peaceful my moments, I’d feel the small tug: ensconced in my hammock, nose in a book on vacation. Hands messy and thick with slip, trying to cajole the lump of clay whirling before me into a mug or a bowl. Ghost with a dust of sand on his nose at the beach at sunset. Snow falling on Christmas night.

These pristine moments, perfect in their own un-contextual way laid out for others to weave their own narrative — to post or not to post?

To post meant trying to wrangle in my adhd brain to just post! before finding myself in a rabbit hole of German Shepherd competition reels convincing myself this was my next calling. Or accidentally seeing the one story that made my heart twinge a bit, no matter how content with my own plan I was. And through it all, the low humming nag thinking of someone or other I really should check in on and catch up with, only to get overwhelmed and…not.

Not to mention the ten plus minutes re-rooting myself in reality once it’s done.

—

I spent years (probably all 10) trying to figure out how to better fit Instagram into my life.

How to not let it influence me too much. How to not spend too much time on it but not feel too behind. How to not try too hard, to be authentic but not too different.

I’m done with the dance.

I don’t want inspiration. I know what I love, I want to let myself love it.

I don’t want to feel like I need to buy everything. And I don’t want “friends” to try to sell me on it.

I don’t want to keep tabs on now strangers. I want to nurture my relationships in this moment.

And I really give zero fucks about the rest.

2024 was about redesigning my life in a way that works for me and my brain rather than trying to reshape and shave down my own sharp corners to fit a societal norm. With Instagram, there are too many unnecessary narratives to get caught up in and I’d like to hear my own inner voice more clearly.

The year changed and my debate changed. To delete or not delete?

—

I woke up Tuesday affirmed but asked for a sign anyway, just for fun. Then this Substack post appeared in a suggested lists for me before 10 am. Clear enough.

Babe, just delete your Instagram already

If that was an article printed out and handed to me in class it would have been ruined with highlights and scribbles and yes! that’s me! I’d write in the margins. The author really sums up how I was starting to see social media, even in my But I’m so evolved and above the influence I’m barely on it!! kinda way:

“If you take even a brief second to step back and think about what you’re really consuming and how much information your brain is processing on a minute-by-minute basis about pretty much every single person you’ve ever known or seen on telly, you would see it for what is was: Absolutely fucking ridiculous. Ludicrous. Insane. FOMO and comparison and fantasy and envy served right into your palm whenever you want it. Like your very own shitty little anxiety tablet you can pop 15 times a day.

What a fucking treat.” - Katie Morley

I couldn’t unsee what I saw it as now.

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There was one fear keeping me: will I miss out on my friendships?

I fought my nervous system endlessly to use Instagram in the “right way” — thinking surely it was the source of staying connected with all the moving we do. And in some regards, it did. But I know that those threads of checking on the highlight images of others are tied lose and not strong enough to carry on a lifetime connection.

And that is okay.

We’re not supposed to have time for everyone, or insight on everyone. We weren’t built that way.

Friendships require an intentionality an IG post cannot provide.

So when I went to hit delete, I shot off a quick text to a few close friends, waffling if this decision even warranted an update. I let them know they were the one good thing on the platform and that I loved them. This is your open invitation to send me pictures, please! I said.

That one outreach sparked beautiful responses: A spa day and Joshua Tree vacation snapshots, a pregnant belly mere weeks from her due date, a five-minute FaceTime to see dogs and kids playing in the snow (?!!!) currently blanketing Panama City Beach (!!!).

The next day I texted a few more. More snowy images, laughter, growing kids we knew when they were 2 feet smaller. A pup in a pink winter coat. A toad found in the garden.

How much more impactful one personally shared photo is than keeping tabs on a snippet of story where you’re left to fill in the blanks.

—

So it’s gone now.

One friend reached out asking if I was okay when she couldn’t find me in her DMs. The irony of this all is I feel more solidly me and more mentally healthy than maybe ever. The past few months saw dots connecting, depression and anxiety leaving me with mere ghosts of their presence. It’s eerie almost, this calm after the storm of the past two years. I no longer feel like I’m constantly in peril.

Deleting Instagram wasn’t the catalyst, but the frosting on the cake of my state change. It affirmed the path I’ve been fighting through, trying to understand what my brain and body were trying to tell me, trying to find how to live peacefully in a world wrought with noise.

Living presently. It can be done.

I knew I would feel better with it gone. I didn’t know just HOW MUCH better. How instantly. In this case the cliche is true: IG was a heavy weight I didn’t know I carried until I set it down.

Deleting Instagram was permission from myself to myself: continue to be free. You always were.