my permanent existential crisis

some notes from my real life lately

Two nights ago I caught myself binge scrolling through my own Instagram. Pretty bright square after pretty bright square, all of those little adventures and pretty moments stacked up next to each other to approximate a beautiful life.

I do this some times with other people’s Instagrams. Scroll through their feed like I’m scrolling through their life. Stack up their Instagram feed next to my normal, ugly day and think damn, i wish my life looked like that.

Except that night I did it with myself, the online version of me I created. Wow, I wish my life looked like that.

(It does and it doesn’t.)

It was 11:30pm when I realized I was scrolling through my own feed mindlessly and realized I was jealous of “me”—

or rather the thing I had created, the online projection of what I wanted my life to be like. I had gone to bed with every intention of reading by the warm bedside lamp light.

(I used to do that all the time. When I was in middle school, my sister Claire and I shared a room and by warm lights like that I would read out loud to her. In winters, we would go to grandma’s house and sleep in the same bed and if I wasn’t reading aloud she would be annoyed I had the light on too late. The last good book I read in full was Remarkably Bright Creatures, a happy little story that takes place north of Seattle. I liked to read about the ocean and coastal towns from my warm winter bed. That was earlier this winter. It’s April now, late April. It still feels like winter.)

Two nights ago an April blizzard beat at the window with ugly sleet. The book I’ve been trying to read for a few months sat unopened on the ground.

pretty squares that are not representative of my actual life

Looking at @ maddymarq’s instagram feed (my feed, or at least the feed I manage for @ maddymarq, disembodied voice) filled me with insecurities. I wanted my hair to fall as nicely as hers does in all those photos, she looks thin and strong and active and I’ve barely moved all winter, her adventures look so effortless, so fun, and mine are always so complicated.

I am constantly comparing myself to a version of me that never existed.

My hair falls nicely in those photos because I only keep & post photos where it does. I looked thin and strong this summer and fall because I paddled for 70 days straight, and trail-thin isn’t sustainable or long-term healthy. My body isn’t supposed to be that thin, and I shouldn’t think of it as aspirational.

And my adventures weren’t effortless or always fun— I was there, I remember it.

It’s just part of my job to take pictures and use them for content and edit those photos to make them just a little brighter, more vibrant and larger than life. But my life was never what my Instagram feed looks like.

If I can be jealous of and hate my own online presence, if comparing myself to my own social media makes me feel like crap, I often wonder how it makes other people feel.

Instagram has helped me meet some of my best friends, and meet so many incredible people I wouldn’t have known otherwise. This newsletter, something I really enjoy writing & curating because it feels real and meaningful, wouldn’t exist if I didn’t use Instagram like an influencer. I’ve gotten really cool jobs and freelancing projects through Instagram, and because of the community-building power on the app and because of the opportunities I’ve gotten, I’m extremely hesitant to quit it.

But (as you know if you’ve been here for a while), the pitfalls of social media are extremely obvious to me. It’s designed to be addictive and profits off our insecurities. Instagram has eroded my sense of privacy and safety and changed the way I see myself.

snow out the window on the way back to the Twin Cities from Duluth

Lately my life has not looked like colorful squares. North Shore spring weather is mud and old snow. And sleet. It’s sleeting right now. The rivers and waterfalls are impressive, but that’s about the only highlight of the whole season.

This winter I spent most of my time inside, and didn’t read, and ate like crap. I broke out my camera so infrequently that I haven’t recharged the battery all winter. My car has been an unspeakable mess. I’m horribly out of shape. It’s been a really, really long winter.

But lately the days are getting longer and things have been easier. I’ve started running again, more than just once a week. Cleaning hasn’t felt like an insurmountable task.

I guess I’m sharing this because my life will never look like it does online, even at it’s best, and that’s okay. I wouldn’t want a life that is only bright colors and fun times— I think that would feel really empty.

And I’m sharing this because if you’ve been comparing yourself to other people lately, to a more ideal version of yourself, you’re not alone.

All of my photos here were shot on iPhone 8 and edited in Lightroom mobile with my presets! Click here to learn more about my presets & download my beginner-friendly photo editing guide. As thank you for being here, you can use the code NEWSLETTER35 for 35% off my presets and editing guide (they come together! thank you for reading, mini self-ad over, thank you for helping me pay for gas!)

in case you missed it + recommended reading:

• Check out the first Hello Stranger audio essay! Here with guest Ebba Safverblad-Nelson (coming to us all the way from ski patrol in Northern Sweden), we talk about risk management in the outdoors, the way we talk about outdoor mistakes online, and some of our own stories from years guiding and expeditions of things that have gone wrong for us, and things we’ve seen go wrong.

• In Stop Influencing for Amazon, we’ll cover Amazon’s influencer and affiliate program, labor rights, and environmental impact as well as ways for smaller online creators to make money that don’t involve affiliate programs.

• Happy Earth Day! There are at least a million Earth Day themed posts you’ll see on the internet, but if you only have time for one, check out Jeff Rennicke’s Earth Day in the Sock Drawer, a beautiful reflection on Julian Nelson & the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore.

some stories, photos, ect. from real life lately: