My New Home: As I am distancing myself from Instagram

First Published June 20, 2018

I had a growing concern about my mental health and how my photography will be consumed moving forward. With all the fears of mental health in the world, I had to take a long hard look and find what my stressor was, without a doubt, Instagram was a big one. After taking a step back from the application, I realized that it could easily desensitize you are a person. It has been a constant source of hormonal behaviours, adolescent ignorance, a highlight reel of everyone’s life and the occasional photography post. I felt that it created a disconnect between what I thought my reality should be. Not to mention the continuous nonsense trends, that only made me feel dumber by consuming and wasting my time to understand like as if I was in high school all over again. 

Too much information in my Hand! - Overload of information
I started to notice that I was continually hitting sensory overload on the daily. Some of the signs for me were not replying back to messages, turning DND mode by 4 pm and just staring blankly into space. I was overexposed with too much information and content that I didn't care about and was irrelevant. I ultimately shut down and couldn't allocate any more of my mental resources into my interest. Therefore I couldn’t primarily focus on these things that did matter in my life, that added value to my character. A great friend of mine put it best “you only have so much emotional currency.”
I was spreading myself too thin and not having the right conversations with people who mattered. It was an illusion of being connected to people. The truth is my trigger to check my Instagram was when I felt a tad bit lonely. I would check my iPhone/Instagram for that "hit" of connectivity to the world, but still feel lonely at the end of the day.  I want to point out the problem wasn't Instagram per se. It was more of my self-control and my inability to pull away from all the stimulus that the app gave me.

Struggling to be Creative.
This platform has without a doubt put a barrier between me and my creativity. I initially thought Instagram would be great for inspirations and to showcase my work. However, it made me question my content constantly and curved my intentions to seek out more likes and followers. My real inspiration has always been in the classic street photography books and the collections found in the museums. Now I want to focus on my platform. It may Inconvenience a lot of people, but I believe this is how I will build my brand, how my creativity will grow and further develop. Not to mention I feel like work can only truly be appreciated/experienced when it's given the space in full resolution on a dedicated web page, not sandwiched in between ads, booty and make-up demonstrations. 

Photography for me has always been a feeling process, and I always like to ask myself if I'm giving my audience enough. That's how I determine what I would want to put out in the world. Hence this blog. 

 Anyways, What I was trying to say is.. welcome to my blog and the start of something new for me :)