I like Instagram. I like taking pictures, putting together an outfit, finding a great restaurant, sharing something funny with my friends, and occasionally posting what I’m doing. I’m not pretending I’m above any of it. But lately I’ve been thinking about how strange it is that we’ve gotten so accustomed to documenting our lives that sometimes it feels like an experience isn’t quite complete until we’ve captured it.
The outfit becomes a post. The vacation becomes a carousel. Dinner becomes a photo. A new hobby becomes a Reel. Even something as simple as making breakfast can somehow turn into a five-step morning routine that somebody is trying to sell you.
At some point, can we just do things?
Not Everything Needs an Audience
I’ve started to really appreciate doing things that nobody else knows about. Going to the little restaurant you love without taking a picture of the food. Wearing an outfit you feel fantastic in without photographing it. Buying flowers and letting them sit on your table without feeling like you need to show anyone.
Read a book because you want to read it, not because everyone on TikTok is talking about it. Take a class because it sounds interesting, even if you’re terrible at it. Go somewhere beautiful and leave your phone in your bag for a while.
There is something surprisingly satisfying about knowing that something happened and keeping it to yourself. It doesn’t need an audience to become real, and it doesn’t need to be documented to count.
We’ve Started Looking at Our Lives From the Outside
This is the part I find more interesting than whether or not someone posts too much.
Sometimes I catch myself experiencing something while simultaneously thinking about how I could photograph it, describe it, or share it. Not constantly, but enough that I’ve noticed. I’ll be somewhere I genuinely want to be, enjoying myself, and part of my brain is already thinking about how it could translate online.
I don’t think that’s entirely our fault. We’re surrounded by other people’s lives all day long. We’re shown what everyone is wearing, eating, buying, renovating, reading, cooking, traveling to, and doing with their supposedly perfect free time. The algorithm is exceptionally good at convincing us that there’s always something else we should be doing.
It can make a perfectly nice life feel strangely unfinished.
You had dinner, but was it cute enough? You went on vacation, but did you get the picture? You bought the dress, but did you style it correctly? You picked up a hobby, but could it become content?
After a while, even leisure starts to feel like work.
I Don’t Want My Hobbies to Become Jobs
I think this is another piece of the problem. We have become very good at monetizing things we enjoy.
If you’re good at baking, start a business. If you like photography, sell prints. If you love clothes, become a creator. If you make something, open an Etsy shop. If you enjoy reading, start a book account.
And maybe you should, if you genuinely want to. There is nothing wrong with making money from something you love.
But you can also just make the cake.
You can take the photographs. You can knit the slightly wonky sweater. You can read 40 books and never post a single review. You can spend an entire Saturday making something that nobody will ever see.
Not everything needs to become an asset.
Some things can just belong to you.
I Miss Private Joy
I think this is what I actually miss: having little parts of your life that aren’t announcements.
The restaurant you and your friend always go to. The song you play when you’re driving alone. The ridiculous inside joke nobody else understands. The outfit you wear over and over because you know you look good in it. The hobby you’ve kept for years without becoming particularly good at it. The tiny traditions you’ve created without even realizing they’ve become traditions.
Those things have a different feeling because you’re not performing them.
They’re just yours.
And I think that’s worth preserving.
This Isn’t an Anti-Internet Rant
I’m not deleting Instagram and moving to a cabin. I like the internet. I’ve found friends, clothes, restaurants, books, recipes, music, and people I genuinely love because of it. I enjoy sharing things, too.
The problem isn’t sharing your life. The problem is when you start feeling like your life needs to be shareable in order to be worth having.
There is a difference.
Post the vacation if you want to post the vacation. Take the outfit photo if you love the outfit. Tell people about the restaurant. Share the recipe. Send your friends the pictures. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of that.
Just don’t let the possibility of content become the reason you do the thing in the first place.
I want to get better at having experiences that never make it onto my camera roll. I want to read books without immediately wondering whether I should talk about them. I want to wear something I love without thinking about whether I should photograph it. I want to have conversations that don’t become stories later.
Mostly, I want some parts of my life to exist simply because I enjoyed them.
We’re living in a time when so much of what we do is visible, measurable, documented, and shared. I don’t think we need to reject all of that. I just think it’s healthy to have a few things that remain completely unremarkable or known to everyone except you.
Your life doesn’t need to be content.
Some of it can just be your life.
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