My morning routine is pretty simple: I wake up, shower, get ready and without fail, I spend 10 minutes scrolling through Instagram and Facebook while drinking coffee.
Social media is to me what the morning paper is to some people, and I’m okay with that. Here’s the truth, though — as much as I love Instagram and Facebook, I would be lying if I said that they’ve never made me doubt the quality of my own life.
We all follow celebrities and bloggers on Instagram, and their posts stand out in our feeds as the ones with the best photo quality, the best angles and the wittiest or most eloquent of captions. Compared to the grainy picture I posted a month ago of me in a poncho at a home football game, these people definitely have one up on me.
Maybe this is all my fault, and maybe following so many photographers and fashion bloggers on Instagram has ruined it for me. Everyone always looks so busy, seeing new things, trying new foods and going new places. In the flurry of it all, my own life, though equally well documented in my share of selfies and panoramas, often seems to look a little dull. After all, I had never gotten more than 4,000 likes on a picture of my outfit, mainly because a typical outfit of mine consists of leggings and some form of T-shirt.
I grew up in Jacksonville, which is a lovely place, but once you’ve done all the touristy things, there’s not really anything left to do. Back when I was 16, I had been banking on the hopes that my life would get more exciting as I got older — that with age would come more freedom to do cool, spontaneous things. But suddenly I was 20 years old and things didn’t seem very different.
Here’s the thing: The beauty of social media has always been that the dull moments don’t have to be shared — that we can handpick the best selfies, the most interesting events and the most golden of sunrises to share with the world. I would know, since I’ve spent years doing just that. I told myself that I would keep doing it until my life became interesting enough that I wouldn’t need to handpick anything, because each individual moment would be worth sharing. That is a common misconception.
We spend so much of our time deciding on the best filter, the funniest caption, the most fitting emoji and we decide that, compared to everyone else, our social media posts are subpar at best. Surely these “other people” were prettier, funnier, livelier and getting more out of life than the rest of us. This is not true, at least, not in the majority of cases. If I spent all this time selecting the things I shared on Instagram to appear as though I was prettier, funnier and getting more out of life, then what was stopping others from doing the same thing? The truth is that this is what we are all doing. None of the “celebrities” we follow on social media, from the bloggers to the foodies, are having fun every single moment of every day. They, much like us, choose filters, take time to think of captions and handpick the moments they want to share.
My life has always been meaningful, and there has never been a point in trying to find more ways to live on the wilder side of things, especially if I was not doing it for myself. My pictures are never as bright and colorful as those posted by people like Kylie Jenner. None of these things discredit my own life and all the moments that I savor day to day. Sure, I don’t have time to get my nails French manicured on a daily basis, and I have never been on a spontaneous tour of Europe. I’ve got time to make super bomb cookies on a daily basis, and I have been on a spontaneous trip to St. Augustine with my boyfriend.
This past summer, I ate astronaut food and built my first sandcastle. It may not be as glamorous as others’ summer escapades, but that’s my life. I sometimes forget to document my finest moments on camera, and that is okay. Because sometimes I am too busy enjoying myself in the moment to share these moments on social media. We see how great others are doing, and we often forget to consider that we are also doing alright. Collegiettes, life is so much sweeter when you live every day for yourself.
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