Making My Weekends Instagram Free

When Instagram all kicked off, it was 2013, I was about 19 and genuinely thought it was just a cool little app to put a filter on your photo before you made it your profile picture of Facebook. LOL. I didn't really understand what followers were and I defiantly didn't know they could see the photos I'd edited! The idea of making my weekends Instagram free, was I thought that didn't even enter my mind.

Then I finally used my eyes and saw it was a new Social Media Platform, for people to share photos of their bffs, or lunch. I loved it, I had a solid 275 followers, who I knew personally and was over the moon with 3 likes. I would slap on the Valencia filter and ironically hashtag it #nofilter and felt like an absolute pro.

Then, one night we were sitting in our local pub, and an old friend showed me this girls account. I can't for the life of me remember the account name but I remember how her feed looked. Pink, bright whites, fashionable and perfect. It blew my mind. Naturally I followed her and went on the hunt for more of these beautiful accounts. I dreamed of being able to make something similar but had 0 confidence or clue where to start. So I carried on as I was just enjoying my little self.

As the gram became more popular, I started to understand these accounts and started to try to get my head around how they created their content. Fast forward to 2020,  I'm still getting my head around it but my love for it has massively grown. I know that I am by no means a big account, but I cherish my followers and really grateful they take an interest in my little corner of the web, but I have found since lockdown, that i'm constantly playing catch up and don't really know where I fit in. I follow some truly beautiful feeds, and long for the day mine will look like that. But while i'm doing all this admiring, it also makes me feel really let down by my own content. Like what i'm creating isn't good enough and kind of losing who I am. I cannot tell you how jel I am of those people who have had their preset sorted for years, don't feel like a plonker in front of a camera, and understand how clothes work!

Every one says the first thing you have to do is find your niche. Well, I have absolutely no idea what mine is and I sometimes start to beat myself up over it, before I tell my self to calm down, its not your job, its something you do to express yourself and let your creativity free. I've found recently, with my screen time massively increasing due to being stuck at home, that while I love absorbing all this different type of content, sometimes I get so wrapped up in what the "perfect feed" should be, I end up hating mine and seem to forget that Insta isn't reality. As a creative person, hating your work isn't really helpful, so I decided to start making my weekends Instagram free. This was a way more positive move than I thought it would've been. I had these 2 days where I stopped obsessing over my feed, where I stopped getting down over wether my edit looked as good as hers. It allowed me to come back Monday with a fresh wave of motivation to make some content I enjoyed, and a fresh eye looking at my stuff. Its helped improve my mood, which has really taken a hit in these last 13 weeks, its pulled me out of my little phone hole that we all get sucked into from time to time and allowed space for me to enjoy things purely, instead of thinking how it will look in a story. But also it's helped with my headaches. I've been getting more than usual which I've been putting down to not drinking enough and also feeling slightly (a lot) anxious every now and then, but having these 2 days where I've downed my phone, its really helped ease those too.

If someone had suggested, pre lockdown, making my weekends Instagram free, I'd have legit ignored them. How could I get through a day without scrolling through pretty pictures?! But its been so much easier than I thought it would be, and honestly, I live by the motto - if something isn't making you happy then you shouldn't do it. So if you're having insta wows, and not really sure where you're supposed to fit in or what content you want to be making, take a few days off to collect your thoughts and come back to it with a fresh pair of eyes and a positive outlook, and it will defiantly help.

Instagram should be a platform you enjoy using, and shouldn't be hard work, and that's exactly why I've been making my weekends Instagram Free.

I'd love to hear you opinions on this, please feel free to leave them in the comment below, or head over to my Instagram and send me a DM. If its not Saturday or Sunday, I'll get right back to you ;)

Thank you as always for reading,

Love Rosie xxx