Month: October 2019

(To be filed under shameless self-promotion.)

Whenever I request to follow someone on Instagram—especially if its someone I know in real life—I always do a quick run through my own Insta.  (Link at right.) It's not that I'm ashamed of anything I've posted—and anyone who knows me knows me—but rather just to get a sense of what I'm presenting to the world; what kind of artificially beautiful view of my life I'm putting out there.

I did the same thing last night after accepting a follow request from my old boss in San Francisco (I'd been following his nearly empty account for quite some time). I wondered what he'd think of the boy (and by boy, I mean I was 39 the last time we had any interaction and was ten years younger than that when he'd hired on as an architectural drafter in that tiny 3-person office back in 1987.

I have to say that I'm quite happy with what I've put out there. I spent quite some time scrolling back to the beginning, back to 2012 when I recreated my account after, in a fit of madness, deleted my original account when Facebook took over the platform.

My only regret is that there are a lot of duplicate images, mostly of the #tbt (Throwback Thursday) variety. I mean, when you've posted nearly eight years of photos there are bound to be duplicates, right?

I removed myself from Facebook years ago. I gave up Twitter back in July. The only remaining social media platform I'm still on is Instagram, and while I know it's probably just as evil as Facebook, I just can't give it up yet. (Although the constant barrage of random ads for absolute shit that pepper the feed on the mobile app is pushing me in that direction.) I enjoy my feed of "bears, vinyl collectors, men who apparently don't own a single shirt among the lot of them, drag queens, d-list celebrities, and alcoholics" as I like to call it. And where do you think a lot of the menz I post here come from. C'mon…

My account is locked down, but if any of you want to follow along, just send a request and maybe leave a comment here or send an email (link at right under "Warning") to let me know its you. Maybe you're already following and I just don't know…but I'd like to!

We should take the "does it spark joy?" question to social media. Go through your Facebook and remove friends that do not spark joy. Go through instagram and unfollow people and pages that do not spark joy. Don't surround yourself with things that don't make you happy." ~ renegadebusiness via Tumblr