Instagram Nation

I began using Instagram recently after having ignored it for years. One reason is that I like taking pictures, whether with a phone or a camera, so I thought it would give me a convenient reason to take more without having to lug my rig around or even have to worry about a pocket camera. Another reason is that I knew more and more people that were sharing images via Instagram, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.

What I found is a free-for-all medium in which people are sharing images that range from stunning to mundane to "what were they thinking". What I learned is that creativity is not endowed to every person with a camera on their phone. The people I follow pretty much dictate the type of images I regularly see, yet just a general browsing through the "EXPLORE" page proves this observation to be generally true. I suppose that Instagram isn't necessarily a medium solely for creative application of the phone camera, therefore who am I to dictate how it should be used?

Here is a non-exhaustive list of photo genres I've seen on Instagram:

Cutest Instagram baby picture ever!  (© Kirsten Leigh)

1. Pictures of Food - I've been guilty of posting these occasionally. For some of us, our table is one of the few or only ever-changing scenes in our lives. However, on the receiving end, do we really care to see what someone is shoving in their cake hole?
2. Selfies - For me, the selfie has become the comic relief of Instagram. The classic, bathroom-mirror selfie is my favorite, where whoever is holding up their phone to capture their reflection as they pose in front of the bathroom mirror. That this is the same room where people poop and shower doesn't matter, I suppose. Where there is a mirror, there's an opportunity for capturing glamorous images of yourself. Now if you could only do it without your phone in your hand. Next time, try holding it out at an angle where you can crop the phone out, Ansel Adams. Also, is it just me hearing the Selfie shouting, "Hey, everyone: look at me! I'm insecure!"?
3. Household Projects, Crafts or Activities - This is the domain of the productive housewife. Taking photos of your newly organized sewing room, your latest culinary success or your most recent domestic coup will most likely only appeal to your also-competitive peers and to those who would love you even if you weren't looking to knock Martha Stewart off her pedestal.
4. Cute Things - This includes a myriad of subjects whose commonality is perceived cuteness. Babies and pets are the largest sub-genres. Baby photos have always been the same: cute only to those who have vested interests in the subject or those rare few who think all baby photos are cute. There are exceptions of universal cuteness, such as images of piglets in rain boots or this photo that I've borrowed.
5. Timeless Moments from Our Lives -  "Timeless", in this sense, means nothing to the general public, except perhaps that it means time stands still as we attempt to fathom why anyone would publish such a photo. However, since Instagram is a subscription/follower service, I suppose we don't have to look at images from people who consistently pain us with their arbitrary submissions.There's always the option to un-follow, or to simply ignore the bad for the sake of the good, should that ever come along. Caveat sectator.

As I've learned my way around Instagram and have discovered which protocols exist and don't exist, I've found myself posting photos that I've later deleted. If I look at one of my images and say to myself, "What the...?!?!", I imagine everyone else would be saying the same.  I now find myself trying more often to be more judicious about what I post and why.

What Instagram is doing is bringing the journalist in each of us out. We want to tell stories with photos and with short, pithy captions. Even if the subject at hand is my dull and boring life, I want to tell it in vivid color (or perhaps a randomly-placed black-and-white photo). The smart phone has leveled places that formerly were only accessible to people with computers and the internet, which were places formerly accessible only to journalists, editors and publishers. Technology has made self-publishing so easy that we all can do it. The questions I'm left with are: Do I have anything to say, and is anyone listening?

Changing Gears

When is it too late to make dramatic career changes? When are you too old to shift so drastically?

I don't know, but at almost 51 years, I'm still thinking about it. I'm weighing options, thinking about the future, and making myself believe that change is still possible. I don't want to die stuck in a rut, which is where I feel I am now. My primary reason for having the job I have now is to provide for my family, but is that all there is?

In most cases, the answer is: yes, that's all there is. Fulfillment, meaning and a sense of accomplishment and success are not things that are guaranteed from our work. That's a shame, too. The fact that we spend so many hours in one place, yet that it cannot mean more than money, is too bad. Yet as these things cannot be guaranteed, they are not totally out of reach.

I'm not necessarily an optimist. I've always seen myself as a realist, which I figure lies in the middle of pessimist and optimist. It means I sometimes give up when the optimist would still be plugging away, but it also means I'm sometimes hard at it when the pessimist is curled up on his couch.

So how do you accomplish great things late in life? Experiencing the best that life has to offer sometimes means leaning way out to grab something, risking a fall from the safety of your perch. Risk. That's the key. Taking risks.

Risk is something that many of us cannot afford when reaching for our dreams. For some of us, too many people depend on us. If I quit my job right now to pursue something else, then my family would suffer along with me. Bills wouldn't get paid. Food wouldn't be on the table. Dreams that cost that much are probably mostly pipe dreams. I need to live in the real world. Living in the real world, I don't feel cheated out of my dreams, but I do often find myself looking into the distance, longing for that far, green country.

Living in a New House

I started keeping a weblog in 2005. It was trending on the web, plus I like to write, so it seemed providential. It started on xanga. Then I became disenchanted with xanga and started one on Blogger. Then I went back to xanga. Now the future of xanga hangs in limbo, plus the only people who read xanga pages anymore are people who post on xanga. Plus, Blogger is the adopted child of Google, and we all know that Google is here to stay. Blogger seemed to be one of those neighborhoods that might not go to slum anytime soon. So here I am again.

I spent a few days researching and moving posts from xanga to wordpress to blogger, which is the circuitous route you have to take to get from xanga to blogger, especially moving 132 posts, which is how many I've accumulated over these years. Not many, but they're all my children.

In moving things to Blogger, I noticed a lot of garbage, too--things I posted that even I don't care about now, so much less so for posterity. I noticed an early trend toward shallow, pointless writing, which I assume all these years hence was because that's what I though keeping a weblog was back then. We all realize that weblogging, for most of us, is an exercise in vanity. Putting our unsolicited thoughts on the WWW--who are we kidding with that? In browsing through these things, I kept only the posts  which seemed to have ongoing merit, no matter how small. Things I might like to read again, things someone else might like to read, things that speak about me, my likes, my desires--these have endured.

Looks like I'm here to stay.