Instagram was launched on October 6, 2010. I signed up and made my first post 2 years later on September 14, 2012...
How's it going today?
I deleted my social media apps off my phone several months ago with wonderful intentions. Well, the joke's on me because instagram and Facebook still have an 'easy button' when you don't have the app. It takes me a split second to login. Do I still endless scroll?
You bet!
AND I thought that reducing down to YouTube would keep me off the main social platforms.
Nope.
Now I am on YouTube for a horrible amount of hours per day along with the others. What do I do about this? Is there a YouTube Anonymous? Social Media anonymous? Wait - scrollers anonymous. I am joking, and I am not joking. But I still scroll the ole FB and Insta feeds...
It came to my realization – when I logged onto my Instagram account (one of several) – that I have posted 999 posts for my original account - spanning over many years. A whole array of things came to mind. What have I been doing? How long did this take? Why did it take so long? (This is crazy guilt for thinking I should have posted more. What???) What's it mean? What's it all for? ...and on and on and on. Then there was this odd feeling of needing to make this one thousandth post big, as in, important. Why does post 1000 mean anything different than post 463?
I surveyed my small but mighty audience. I had three people give me ideas of what I could post.
Why am I making this a big deal?
I'm not even sure. 999 posts still doesn't account for all the many Insta Stories nor Reels nor time spent planning or creating the content. Sometimes it was simple. Sometimes it took hours or even days, to be truthful. I was consumed to create an Instagram wall that looked on brand, or looked pretty, or posted what I thought would be 'liked'. Surely I am not the only one who thinks about this.
When I polled my audience, out of the 3 answers, one person suggested "Create something that spoke to 'how I got there' or what's it mean to me". That idea hit a cord in an interesting way.
Let's say one post equals one hour. This includes planning, creating, and extra scrolling afterwards. This totals 41.625 days. However, the average person stays on social (according to a quick google search and then I'll take the average of all the ages) for about 5 hours a day. Let's consider scrolling inflation and just say 2 hours a day to calculate the time over the years. I've been on instagram for just over 10 years... multiply this, carry the one, divided by that... I've spent 304 days of my life on social. But I know it is more time per day so I will round up that a full year.
Overall, what does this add up for me and 1000th post?
It was certainly great to see all the memories from the years gone by like the funny gifts for my 40th birthday, some of the trips that we've been on, funny posed family members (it's good to laugh at yourself!)... and something oddly timed that I am still scratching my head over. #IYKYK (You'll see as you scroll. It is quite obvious.)
All of these posts have created a "Me" time capsule. I laughed and reminisced with my self as I scrolled through.
But I figured it out!
The importance of Post 1000 wasn't actually the post at all. It was the review of what has been posted. It was the review of what it means and what I want to do next.
If you have read this far, I would ask you to do the same thing. Post your original first nine images and make a reel of you scrolling through your feed. Let me know your thoughts on this activity. It certainly opened my eyes on what I need to be prioritizing.
This blog post is human generated content. All grammatical errors are my own. Hang in there, it is getting better. (:
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