I’ve spent the past 10 months working on myself intensely… via Instagram.
Until this past year, Instagram had never held too much importance to me. When I moved to college for my freshman year and started to make new friends/followers, I realized that my Instagram game was weak. WEAK. One of my new friends at school had an account that captured her cool, collected and artsy personality perfectly.
It intimidated me.
Back at my high school, I had one of the most cohesive social media presences — or so I thought. But at college, I was facing so much more. The photos I post on Insta now show my friends and family how I spend my time and what I care about. If I were putting thought into how I looked or how I spoke to people IRL, why wasn’t I applying the very same process on Instagram?
I felt so… young and so cluttered when I looked at my account. It wasn’t a reflection of who I was. There were filters that didn’t enhance photos…
…captions that didn’t make sense to most of my followers…
…and worst of all, I barely even mentioned my own work in videography. I compared it to the accounts of other photographers and filmmakers and that was the turning point. If I wasn’t even taking my Instagram seriously, how was I expecting anyone to take me and my work seriously?
My content needed a reboot.
No more overexposed selfies.
No more inside jokes as captions
I was 19 and knew I had to get it together. I thought of all of this back in August, but started taking the changes more seriously in January of this year.
“Making better content” was actually a resolution of mine. I started to build my Instagram from more than just photos, but actual moments. I posted about the film classes I was taking, the bands I was shooting (vs. the bands I shot). I started to take better photos of where I was and what I was seeing. I stopped being embarrassed to get my photo taken and asked friends to help out. I started growing past insecurities and I even posted makeup-free selfies. But above all, the biggest additions to my Instagram were definitely my food photos (found under #kimcomida) and the introduction of videos.
In the past I thought I was sharing who I was on Instagram, but I realize now I’d had been constricted by my own hesitations to try anything different. It sounds pathetic because if anywhere, online is where you’re free to be who you are. I made my account as a sophomore in high school and I think that being surrounded by people with accounts so similar to mine, I never really pushed myself or cared to push myself to see it as anything more. After all the changes I’ve made, I finally feel like who I am IRL is who I am online.
It’s taken some time but good content isn’t built in a day!
