I is for Instagram #AtoZChallenge

I joined Instagram in *checks first post* 2014 and since then, I have made exactly eight posts.

See, the thing about Instagram is that I don’t get it. I mean, I get it. But I am not really a pictures person. I’m a words person. I love words. I have a lot to say about most things, most times. (Anybody who knows me well or is a regular reader of the blog is like, “MOST????”) Anyway, the point is that a platform based on pictures doesn’t really speak to me, generally speaking.

I mean, honestly, do you know how long it took for me to add pictures of book covers to my book review posts? A long time is how long because I was like, “Who needs pictures? It’s a book! It has words! Look up the book if you want to see the pictures! This is about words!”

But, you know, people love Instagram. I have friends who–and I know this is shocking–don’t read my blog posts, and I even have friends who don’t read my Facebook posts because they are too long.

Too long! My FB posts are pretty brief, comparatively speaking. I try to save the long posts for the blogs.

But those friends look at my pictures on FB, read enough of the accompanying post to get the gist and then move on.

Meanwhile I’m over here like:

On my blog posts, I mean. And I guess, apparently, my FB posts.

So, yes, I joined Instagram in 2014, posted five times. Signed up for some contest or something in 2018 that required a (public) social media account, posted twice more to show I was an actual person. Then, in the past year or so, I started lurking on Instagram because I have a handful of friends who either post there exclusively or post there more than FB. (At least one of these people also has a Twitter, but Twitter moves so fast, it’s impossible to keep up with most of the important things over there, and I figured out that she’s more likely to post the more life-y updates to Instagram.)

So, yes, I became a lurker.

I say lurker with disdain, btw, because I do not really care for lurkers. Like, I get it. But I also hate it. Because lurkers don’t share as much about themselves, yet they know all about you! Because they are reading your posts but perhaps not engaging or they are reading but not telling you anything in return!

But I went onto a platform that operates in a medium I am not that great at or not that comfortable with and became one of them: LURKERS.

Now, here’s the thing about my style of lurking: I still can’t help but make comments! (So I guess I’m not a true lurker. This is a lie: I only really make comments on a handful of the Instagram accounts I follow, so yes. I must admit–again–that I am one of them.)

Okay, FINE, I am a lurker. There, I admit it. But only on Instagram apparently. Because I have tried to lurk on Twitter, but I still somehow have over 27k posts. And I don’t even like Twitter that much! See what I mean? Words are my downfall.

Okay, there is a point here. The point is that I actually really like seeing people’s pictures on Instagram. I love pictures of people’s kids, always. And people post really fun things there, especially in their stories.

So, over the past few weeks, I started dabbling in Instagram more. I played around with filters (and posted the pictures on FB because, you know, words). But then, I posted a few stories, which were delightful, and I got some good responses.

But the PROBLEM is that I don’t know what to post. I mean, we all know I’m an eclectic blogger. But I don’t look at the things I see and think they would make interesting pictures. You know, maybe if I’m challenged to take a picture, I can do it. But to just walk around thinking about pictures to take? I mean, I’m usually just watching TV or reading things (sometimes online, sometimes offline). Or grading. Or–and now especially–just hanging out in my house.

I also have this thing where I don’t want to just post the exact same thing on Instagram that I do on Facebook. Because otherwise, why would people follow me on both? (I realized today that I could just slightly change my captions and that solves that problem.)

(If you’re new here, I have a slight issue with both overthinking and overcomplicating…everything.)

So today, I made my 8th actual post on Instagram and this happened:

So I guess maybe I’ll try again. I mean, learning something fun that gives me a different way to connect to more people during this time can’t hurt, right?

For this year’s A to Z Challenge, I have decided that I’m going to focus on my survival/coping strategies while practicing social distancing. What are the things that make it bearable? What helps alleviate my stress and fear–or at least what distracts me from both? Tune in tomorrow to see what I have chosen for J!