Little windows into January {2.7.25}

...and why, surprisingly, I'll miss using IG 📸

For many, many reasons, I chose to log out of Instagram a couple weeks ago—for like, the fifth time, though I think I’ve finally had enough—and only use the platform in a professional capacity moving forward. That last bit belongs to part of a larger conversation re: whether self promotion actually works, but the point of this post isn’t to provoke discourse. (I am so exhausted of discourse. 😭) The point of this post is to admit that, despite its faults, I’m going to really miss the visual medium of IG—and by visual medium, I mean photos.

Left: sunrise shining through doodles my kids left on the bathroom window | Right: my daughter playing peek-a-boo with my mom on her 60th birthday

I should preface the rest by saying I’m not here to control or condemn how others use social media. Publishers ask authors to promote their work online, and I’ll never begrudge anyone for doing just that; it’s industry standard at this point, and no one can escape that expectation, including me. Just this week I posted about the Barnes & Noble preorder sale, and I’ll need to continue posting graphics and excerpts from The Shadow Bride until after its publication. Am I feeding a broken machine? Yes. Do I know how to fix said machine? Unfortunately, no.

What I do know, however, is it felt like drowning in a sea of white noise every time I opened IG the last few months, maybe even years. Instead of scrolling my feed, I found myself clicking through stories, craving little windows into the quieter moments of humanity. I wanted to see an acquaintance’s dog sunbathing on the rug, the eggs benedict they cooked for breakfast. I wanted to see the selfie too imperfect to post on the main and the tomatoes in their garden, their parents’ crinkled smiles and the books on their bedside tables and just…their lives.

Left: my youngest daughter saying “CHEEEESE” and flashing her enormous teeth | Right: after braiding my oldest daughter’s hair while watching The 10th Kingdom

That might seem silly since most of these people exist exclusively inside my phone. (A lie in itself—people are people, not handles and profile pictures.) Even so, why would I want to see the minutiae of their lives? Why would they want to show it to me? We don’t truly know each other, only how we present ourselves online, but in those rare quiet moments we share…there is a connection. A spark. A recognition that yes, I also love to watch the light slant through my bedroom window each morning. I love to curl up and read with my cat too. These moments bond us on a fundamental level—and that is what I’ll miss about IG.

I worked as a photographer before hanging up my camera to write Serpent & Dove, and one of the most unpleasant and unexpected side effects of using IG was how suffocating it became to take photos. I blame much of this on the rise of influencer culture, which inevitably trickled down into publishing. It became less about the writing and more about the writer, specifically about “building a brand”—except the brand is often a superficial amalgamation of our most aesthetic selves and, if we can remember, our books.

As someone with a background in marketing, I inevitably fell prey to this trap.

Serpent & Dove’s cover was black with a giant snake on it, so I wore dark lipstick to match. I started editing my photos dark too, only posting the ones that reflected a witchier aesthetic—after all, the main character of S&D was a witch. And again, it isn’t that I don’t like dark lipstick and moody photos because I do. I love them, but if I’m honest with myself, I wore that lipstick in every selfie because my readers liked it too. I curated a very specific feed because those same readers asked how to recreate it. What VSCO preset do you use? was one of my most commonly asked questions during AMAs. Let’s talk about your social media, is still a topic interviewers broach to this day. My IG feed and personal brand somehow became more important than my work—perhaps even became my work—and I didn’t realize until it was too late to change course without disappearing from social media entirely.

Well-intentioned readers thought I’d been hacked when I came back and deleted everything. In truth, I just couldn’t be a brand any longer, and my relationship with social media is something I’ve struggled with ever since.

Left: Fig, one of three feral kittens we adopted last summer, who is now our resident biscuit maker | Right: Peter, another of the three kittens, who insists on sleeping under the covers

Which leads us full circle. Though I still don’t have any answers, I can’t devote all my time to IG any longer. And in a plot twist that surprises no one, my creativity has soared since making that decision—as has my desire to take photos of those quiet moments that have nothing to do with black lipstick and S&D. For the first time in a long time, I’m seeing color and composition in my daily life rather than content; I’m printing polaroids and scrapbooking with my kids. I’m journaling. I’m doodling. I’m reading, a lot, and even dipping my toes back into poetry, which I haven’t done since high school. And all of these things are good. They’re fulfilling and tactile in a way I’d forgotten. At the end of the day, however, I still miss the simple joy of sharing photos—I miss seeing other people’s too—which finally brings us to the point of this post: sharing little windows into my life last month.

There are many cats. There is too much artificial film grain. And each moment in these photos brought joy, as did capturing the moments themselves. I hope you found some joy in January too. <3