Instagram Breakup and Moving on to ✨Blogging✨

One year ago, I broke up with Instagram. At first, it was scary, which is hard to even admit. I felt like the app connected me to my friends and family. I worried that I would miss big events in people’s lives or that I would lose friendships. But in actuality I spent 99% of my time consuming photos and videos that had nothing to do with my connections to loved ones. So, with the encouragement of Jack, my partner, I deleted the app in the spring of 2022 shortly before moving to Zion National Park for a (very photogenic) summer of seasonal work. But no photos from my summer in Zion adorn my Instagram page. And guess what? I’m still alive and I still have friends and family and I spend way less time worrying about how the internet perceives the very curated visual display of my “life.”

BUT, despite alllll of that, I still really want to share about our bike trip this summer. So instead we’re here, on a blog. Returning to the OG social media, perhaps. Is it really any different? I hope so. I thought a lot about reigniting my Instagram in order to document our summer of biking around the west. I came very close. Ultimately, I don’t want to feed into the endless scroll. I want to share stories, silly moments, ridiculous videos and beautiful photos, but I don’t want to feed into the strange and distorted world that is Instagram. My hope is that this blog can be a little more real, a little more thoughtful, and a little more silly. I hope that this can be a creative outlet for myself and Jack to share about our adventures and to celebrate the struggles and joys of biking, without serving it all on a platter that is designed to addict our brains and make us compare our lives to others.

Ok time to step down off the lofty Instagram soap box. Only fun and games or tears and hardship from here on out. Thanks for reading (: