New Look.

You may have noticed that things look a little different around here.

Some new photos (ever so thankful for Keelyn Heaven for taking such marvelous pictures), a sprucing of dialogue, a font change here and there, and then the same old Elan.

I had been wanting to update my blog for quite some time now. With average at best website design knowledge, I spent hours and what felt like days of maximizing this minimal understanding of coding and web “stuff”, but finally finished a new blog look that I am most proud to call my own.

I’ll tell you now: it was not easy.

Aside from my naiive knowledge, I had to deal with many frustrated breakdowns, bouts of self-doubt, and dealing with the ever constant pressure to design my blog a certain way, a right way.

See, when I first began visualizing this blog, I sought out website assistance from professionals, those who designed sites because it was their craft.

After excitedly sharing my idea for a blog, which will someday transition into my magazine, I sat with Bambi eyes and waited to hear what they suggested.

Most of the time, it was like they hand’t even listened to a word I said.

“Advertising, we’ve gotta have advertising for the payoff to make blogging worth your while,” despite having told them I did not want advertising for the sake of being a genuine human. I didn’t believe in preying on my readers for money to “make it worth my while.” Snitch, I’ve been paying for my blog for years and haven’t seen a single cent back, but do you know what value I do get in return? It may not come as dollar bills, but it comes in the form of the guy coming up to me in person and commenting on my latest blog post. That, is value.

“Collaborations, we have to set you up with affiliate programs to get you set up as a fashionista helping Alaskans buy clothes online,” which makes no sense at all to me because 1) I’m not a “fashionista”, I’m simply stylish 2) my blog isn’t about selling clothing to Alaskans, and 3) most of the clothing I do wear is used and vintage, which can’t be resold like the clothes you buy on Amazon (sorry, one of a kind here folks).

I sat there, dumbfounded at this idea they were trying to sell me.

I know I’m probably perceived as this terribly picky customer who wants to do things the hard way, but I believe in authenticity and the idea that blogging for me is a work in progress perfecting my own craft: writing.

My purpose with blogging isn’t necessarily to attract followers. Would I love if more people read it? But of course. I believe in organics though, not buying space on the internet and paying to get seen by a certain number of people. I write because it’s how I express myself, just like with personal style, dance, theatre, singing, and banging on the drum set.

I write because once I get going on a story, or a prompt, words pour out of me and I feel this overwhelming high. I write because I’ve been doing it everyday since I was 8 years old and it’s a part of my DNA to use my pen and fingers to make magic with words. I write because it’s a part of who I am.

I don’t have much in the way of a huge fellowship, but I do have my voice, my words, and my stories and I’m using them to show the world that I believe in myself and in what I’m doing, as it applies to my best interests. And it will grow, slowly, over time.

I believe gradual is beautiful. Authenticity is beautiful.

I couldn’t consciously let someone take over my blog because their intentions weren’t on the same page as mine, and the idea of letting my voice be squashed to fit a mold was unbearable.

I’m proud of my new look because while it’s spruced up, it holds the same purpose and the same goal:

“…to educate, enlighten, and entertain readers on the lively observations and experiences of my life”

If everyone else is making money off of advertising, collaborations, and affiliate programs, you sure as heck won’t find me there.

I’ll be making bank, don’t get me wrong, but it’s the kind of value that will leave an impression on my heart, not my bank account.

And all the while, I get to stay true to me.

A Break(up).

It didn’t begin as a bad relationship.

They rarely do.

They begin with butterflies and then slowly, over time, once you’ve spent enough time with them, you see parts of them you didn’t see at the beginning. These parts you either learn to accept, like, or love, or you discover that they’re not a healthy part you want to live with.

This “relationship” I could no longer live with. After I put up with how awful it made me feel, and how it negatively affected my perception of myself and the world, I decided it was time for a break.

Instagram and I broke up.

Our “relationship” first began in the summer of 2013. I was late on the bandwagon from the get go, but I remember distinctly the first photo that I uploaded, a magazine quote by Kelly Osborne:

“You’ll never fall in love until you let someone love you the way you deserve to be loved.”

Not quite knowing what I was about to get myself into, as I’m sure everyone else was also thinking, I excitedly played along with the masses in my eagerness to post photos of my last lunch and all my summer selfies.

For years, I had already been doing this, documenting my life behind the lens of a camera. I plowed through my fair share of cameras, feeling like the OG when it came to taking photos of my life and my many adventures. Then the iPhone came out with wicked camera capabilities, making it even easier to share photos, and old fashioned click cameras became a thing of the past.

And that’s what I initially liked about Instagram: it was a photo sharing app.

But like with most social media companies, it exploded with the masses and quickly grew into one of the biggest and most profitable social media apps in the world.

Its purpose, whilst still remaining a photo sharing app, advanced, becoming a more profitable platform where companies could profit off Instagram’s connection with the millions of people using it, all on one channel.

Like with most things in my life, the more popular it became, the more I came to dislike it.

We live in a world where we obsess over other people. And if it’s not obsession with other people, it’s our consumption with what other people think of us.

Social media makes it easy for people to obsess over other people because all we see is the carefully curated parts of people’s lives, the best photos, the edited ones that manipulate sensitive people like me into believing that our lives don’t compare to those whom we obsess over. Instagram’s image often neglects to display the messy parts of our personal journeys that have the most impact on our growth. It uses incentives to manipulate users into posting photos that they will likely receive more attention over.

A photo of me ugly crying in my bed or a pic of me in my cherry red bikini? We all know which one will get more attention.

When I’m busy scrolling, I start to feel like an ugly, sad, potato sack because I get so lost with everyone else I’m seeing, forgetting everything I’ve done and created. What happens is I, and I’m sure other people, end up trying harder to be like them because according to material statistics, like followers and likes, what they’re doing is successful. We end up neglecting the careful curation of our own lives, the ones filled with messy bits and pieces because these perfect online personalities look so much better than real life.

How much time do you spend focusing on other people instead of yourself and your happiness?

There are a lot of parts of social media that I have problems with. It has a negative impact on self-esteem, it carries an empire of “influencers” (which is essentially a popularity contest built on the grounds of attractiveness, social media smarts, and ability to captivate audiences with clever captions and photo-shopped pictures), it profits off selling user’s information (which we all agreed to in their contract, but is still morally wrong), this new definition of beauty they’ve created (which has to do with aesthetic perfection), the culture it facilitated where people are increasingly losing their ability to communicate with other humans, and this toxic hold it has over users who are now living their lives through a screen.

I know, know, that there are benefits to social media, but it feels like me saying “there are benefits to this bad relationship- the sex is great!”

And there are profiles out there on social media that use this platform to inspire and educate, that use their influence to do good for other people, encouraging followers to own their story and be themselves, but I cannot get over the fact that at the end of the day, it’s likes, comments, and shares that determine the “success” of who these people are.

So if all of our value is wrapped up in other people’s validation, what makes you you?

And that’s just it: social media is just not for me.

I broke up with Instagram because I didn’t like the way it made me feel. Am I sensitive? Yes. Am I insecure? But of course, I’m only human.

I have never felt anything but negative thoughts of envy, unhappiness, and low self esteem whenever I’ve been on Insta. When I do get the occasional set of butterflies, it’s when my crush likes one of my photos, or when it gets a lot of likes, which just further perpetuates this feeling of needing that validation.

Social media doesn’t tell the whole story, and my whole thing is about telling the whole story. My story has never been about following the same path as other people, and so I’m trusting my feelings and limiting my time with it for the betterment of my health, and ultimately my success.

Despite what social media sells, this “platform for change and development”, it’s really a fake front that’s in the business of making money.

I took four months off from Instagram and after the initial itches I had to post photos of the incredible moments of my summer, like the salmon I caught, or the outfit pic I was proud of, I learned instead to just live my life, not obsess about posting this… proof that I had a good one.

I’m not completely broken up from Instagram’s addictive hold, but I contain the power now because I know the ugly side of the photo -shopped front, and it won’t be long before I make the final move to break up with it once and for all.

Sometimes, things must end in order for new and better things to begin.

And what a glorious beginning it has been already.