I find it interesting that people say ‘ don’t go on Instagram. It will make you depressed as you compare your life to all those other phony lives that look perfect but aren’t happening.’ I go on Instagram to review all my old posts and stories and end up feeling grateful that this is my life. No, I don’t post all the gory details like my violent episode with food poisoning this past weekend, but I do post the lovely and the memorable and the joys and these are events and people and happenings that are real in my life. I don’t spend too much time staging things. Maybe that’s just the MO of people at my stage of life.
I look at my story highlights and reels and posts that end up reminding me that this IS my life. All these things actually happened and are exactly as I post them and I am so blessed by it all. Blessed that this is the life I get to live. It actually does look pretty good. It encourages me. It reminds me I have so much to be grateful for on days when I’m not really feeling it. I post the lovely today – as it happens – so I can go back and look at it on a tough, not so lovely day.
Decorating is one of my passions. I love to garden. I’m enthralled by flowers and their growth and their cycles. I continue to use my creative abilities to make lovely things and I like to share them in order to inspire someone else to do the same. I’m in my happy place in the kitchen baking or cooking. When it come to Christmas, well I think I own it. I don’t post me doing laundry or ironing. Or me cleaning the dog poop out of the dog run. Or coloring my grey roots.
I am just an ordinary person. An ordinary woman. An ordinary wife. An ordinary mom. With an ordinary life. Doing quite ordinary things in my own creative way. I am a sucker for schmaltz. What can I say?
I do get ideas off Instagram for ways to improve my life and myself. I get inspired by spiritual posts. Have a good laugh at hilarious posts. Enjoy and get tips from the gardening posts. I think I can see right through the phony lifestyles of the rich and famous (not all of them) and I just don’t follow those people. I follow people on Instagram that inspire me and make me happy. That’s all. I find it quite an encouraging distraction and pastime.
That’s just my experience. I like to use the Internet and technology for good and not for evil. It’s all in how you apply it. Viva la Instagram.
The Red Plaid Apron 