A Brush With Instagram

And the tyranny of, "if she's doing it, I should do it too,"

Hey friend,

A little while ago, I got a bee in my bonnet about The Snuggle. I love writing here, and thought, if I’m serious about writing, I should try and promote it. Everyone else is doing it. I talked to my friend about the possibility of starting a referral program through Substack, but she suggested Instagram instead. 

It makes sense. It’s where all the women my age are gathered. I saw some statistic that 1.3 billion people use the app every day. I spoke to someone in the media industry, who thought it would be impossible to promote a podcast without at least one social media channel. She, too, recommended Instagram. 

Photo by Georgia de Lotz on Unsplash

The problem is I closed all my social media accounts six years ago. I’d been working in a prison (which means no phones), writing a dissertation, and studying. I didn’t know where the hours on socials came from. But app timers don’t lie. 

Then there was the constant, low-grade shame infection. I picked at my body like a scab. My skin was acne-ridden and dermatitis-prone. I hated having to wear glasses full-time; not being able to wear makeup; my poking-out stomach; my fang-like, overlapping teeth, and frizzy hair. So I scrolled and scrolled and scrolled, hoping to find the golden answer to my body, my house, my life. 

So, I’m coughing to the point it feels like little bits of lung might come up next and communicating via whisper, having thrown my hands up in desperation and cancelled all my plans for the week. I lean on the jarrah table behind me, because standing seems like too much effort, and commune with my bestie: Google. 

I ask, “How to promote a newsletter on Instagram?” But I don’t know if Google gets my underlying question, which is, can I do this sensibly? Like, with boundaries and rules. But Google nags, “you must post every day,” and “you must use reels,” and “you must schedule posts.” I wave away wisps of concern about the sheer amount of work this might involve and plead with Google for a loophole like, “where are the poets on Instagram?” Maybe poetry is how I can be sensible on socials? 

I shift to the kitchen, connect my phone to the extra-long charger, and sway between blowing my nose and rifling through the fridge. I decide to set up a new account for The Snuggle, but Meta thinks I have malicious intent by concealing my true identity and bans me. There is the option for me to login to my old account to set up an additional profile. With a few clicks and taps, I’m in. 

It starts innocuously enough, scrolling through my profile, active from 2014-2018. The squares show pristine beaches, plated up dishes, and the first fruits from my garden. But I’m struck by the things it doesn’t show. I was studying full-time and working part-time. There was financial stress. My parents’ divorce. The sanitised squares reveal nothing. 

Here’s a friend from my undergraduate degree. She has two babies but still gets out to live music, edgy functions in the city, and weekends away. Her husband is doting, her children compliant, and she’s always wearing the right thing. Sometimes, Converses and graphic tees, sometimes Doc Martens, sometimes 1950s housewife dresses and heels. She has time for work and watercolour painting and a beautiful renovated house with a library and houseplants. Compared to her, my wardrobe seems cheap and suburban. Compared to her, my creative dreams are small. Dread scuttles up my chest like a spider. But I flick it away, click onwards and upwards, until I find her.

Here’s my high-school friend, the one I always compare myself to. It might be twenty years later, but here she is, still doing it better than me. She has three children, all holding little boards saying, “This is my first day of school,” in pristine uniforms. Here she is in the pool, wearing matching bathers with her daughters. Here she is walking out of her front door: her hair perfectly coiffed, with the right sunglasses, jumper, and sneakers, flanked by her immaculately-dressed children. All of a sudden, I feel smaller and shabbier in my own life, flanked by tissues, a half-eaten apple, and an array of medicines. 

Then it hits me. I don’t have to be here. I swipe the app closed, but this isn’t enough. I delete Instagram off my phone. Then I throw my phone in the wooden box on my hallway table and walk away. I kick myself, why did I even go there, I knew this would happen!

Over my week of sick leave, I roll this experience around like bitter candy in my mouth. When I was on Instagram every day, I was used to the constant comparison wheel, like, step right up! Who do you want to compare yourself to today? But after six years? Opening up the Instagram feed felt like a screaming fire alarm. It felt too loud, too garish, too much.

It was like Tim Keller says, driving a Mack truck onto a bridge with hairline fractures. The truck doesn’t cause the fractures, it shows what’s already there. Instagram doesn’t cause envy, it reveals the fractures in my heart. I have to fight for joy. There are many beautiful, encouraging Instagram accounts, and many, many ways to use the app well. I just can’t do it. 

What shook me most was my assumption I would be free from comparison just because I was on a different social network. In a lot of ways, Substack feels quieter. The focus is writing rather than bikinis, but the problem isn’t the network. It’s my heart. My heart desired to expand beyond the boundaries the Lord set for me, to think, if she’s doing that, I should do it too.

God did not tell me to hustle, promote, and expand at all costs. He gave me a love of words. He told me to tend and grow what he has given. He asked me to be willing to serve with my words, no matter how many women read. I started writing publicly because I love to write. It’s the one thing in my life where I do not have a five-point plan to stop the boats. It’s the one thing where I am not planting seeds to see fruit five, ten, or fifteen years down the track. It is a sheer joy to write here. 

I want to write beautiful, honest words that make women gasp in recognition. Not honesty for honesty’s sake, not to make me look good, but to show God’s goodness. To notice, like Ashlee Gadd says, “the remarkable grace flooding my unremarkable life.”

I want my words to be a faint echo of His beauty. I want The Snuggle to feel like warmth spreading through your chest, like remembering to breathe, like sunshine on a winter’s day. I want to plod along, faithfully and sustainably, but Instagram is not a place to plod. I would explode like a satellite across a cerulean sky. So here’s to quiet, slow plodding, trusting that God delights to work in my weakness, just because he can (1 Corinthians 1:27-29).

Tell me in the comments:

1. What are the most encouraging spaces you know online?

2. Who are the women who encourage you most in your real, everyday life? Why?

3. In what areas of your life do you need to fight for joy?

4. What practices have you put in place to fight comparison?