stuck

I feel like Instagram has really warped my sense of reality. I’ve started using it more frequently again to stay connected to my friends, after having moved countries. I don’t like the impact it has on the way I perceive other people’s lives, my own life as well as the world overall. I think it has ruined my sense of experience. I feel as if my experience of life becomes subdued sometimes because of the time I’ve recently started to spend on Instagram.

It’s difficult to put in words how I have been feeling recently. I guess this post is just a way to unpack that. It’s not simply about self-worth and feeling unproductive when I look at other people’s lives online. But it’s more to do with the way I experience life. What I think during the day. What I hope to do, the plans that I make with friends or for myself. It is everything which is being impacted. I also believe it has led to me taking things for granted. I don’t often acknowledge and be grateful for the life I’m living currently. As a master’s student living in central london with a part-time job (with good colleagues) surrounded by genuine friends, I have so many things to be grateful about. I am living the life that I dreamt about. I have seen the locations which inspired the poems I read in school. I have listened to the artists live that I used to listen to as a teenager on my iPod. I have read interesting pieces, met people from across the world. When I look at my photo gallery, it all seems unreal.

But why do I feel so stuck, empty and at times disoriented? Is it shallow to attribute these feelings to a social media platform? Or do these feelings stem from different causes? Is Instagram the perpetrator or an enabler? I don’t think it is easy to answer these questions. But I do know that this social media platform has a knack of emphasising the so-called gaps in my life. It hurts a lot when I fall into the rabbit hole of thinking about these gaps. And it’s tough to climb out of this quicksand-like pit that I dig for myself. I look at my own feed to make myself feel better. I get overwhelmed and then numbness takes over. And then there is no sense of excitement. No acknowledgement of the things that are actually going well. I just wallow in my comfortable grief.

I look for things to snap me out of it. I’ve realised hiking really helps me. Skipping through forest trails surrounded by the smell of tall trees and looking at the clouds in the sky always feels like a breath of fresh air. I still remember my last hike when I had painted my nails dark green, and tracing my fingertips on the textured barks of trees made me feel one with the forest. Besides hiking, exploring new places in general is inspiring.

Although, I have recently felt like I’ve explored so much without processing any of it. Sometimes it’s more to tick stuff from my list than actually take in what is in front of me. Is this a result of decreased attention span and increased screen time?

I don’t know if I’ll ever find answers to such questions. But I guess I should try moving away from Instagram again and seeing if it changes anything. I just want to stop feeling stuck and be more present.

*Photo by Andrew Guan on Unsplash