Lessons from an Instagram Hiatus (+ Bedhead)

My dear friend instagram, you are that friend I love and find inspiring some days, then totally anxiety inducing the next. I find myself 'tolerating' you, more often than not. But I just can't quit ya.

Instagram was one of the reasons I started my Bedhead project in the first place. When I post flattering photos of myself, I get on average about 50% more likes than posts of my artwork do. If it's me AND my artwork? Bonus!

So what happens when I feel I can't take a flattering photo because of x y or z about my face or my body or my outfit? What happens when all these other folks are looking faboo in every post they put up and I'm left here on my end feeling real frumpy? Well, that answers it. I feel frumpy.

While the bedhead project has helped me greatly in feeling better about myself, I decided to also try a whole month without Instagram. I did this for several reasons:

• That frumpy feeling. It's no good, and the artistic or creative inspiration that instagram gives me isn't really worth that feeling.

• I spend way way way way way too much time on instagram. I tried imagining all the work I could get done or the creating I could do in the time I spend scrolling through photos of others' work and life.

• I'm working on tackling some anxieties that cause me to fidget, all the time. I constantly need my hands and eyes to be stimulated and I found that instagram was an outlet for that behaviour. Probably a relatively healthy one, but I'm trying to work on mitigating the need for that stimulation altogether.

I managed to stay off instagram for the month of October! I did check it once when someone had told me they'd sent me a message, but otherwise I deleted the app and kept it off my phone altogether.

It's hard to tell if it was instagram alone, because of other efforts towards minimizing my stress and anxious behaviours, and I moved in with my boyfriend for a October as well (as a 'trial run'... exciting stuff for another post!), but my anxieties were at an all time low! Honestly, my appearance was rarely even on my radar beyond having fun with clothes and making myself presentable for work. It was very freeing. I also found myself knitting or reading or working on school work much more deeply and frequently, without little bubbles of distraction from my phone.

As soon as I put instagram back on my phone on November 1st, I spent way too long "catching up". The feeling of being sucked right back into the app was so apparent to me, that I deleted it again the same day! I started comparing myself to others again, mainly when it comes to appearances. I started day dreaming about cutting my hair or dying it or getting a nose piercing. I've caught myself online shopping and wanting more more more, flattering outfits, trendy outfits. Something new. I don't actually want to do these things, but here they are, new ideas in my head.

I've decided not to delete instagram again, though I have been feeling very close to it. I want to learn to find the self confidence and will power to use it wisely. To use it in a way that works towards my goals: sharing my art work with followers, and engaging with other artists on the platform. That's really what I want it to serve as. So, I started by unfollowing all the beautiful fashionistas I followed. Not because I don't still love their style, but because it is damaging to me to see their feeds day in and day out on my phone.

Do you have an instagram where you share your art? I would LOVE to follow you! My instagram for my art is @katiaengell_ , and my instagram for this blog is @house.of.ell if you'd like to follow back.

BEDHEAD: Update & Writing for Self Love

First, I want to thank everyone for being so supportive and kind to me about my Bedhead Project. If you follow along my Instagram, you'll know that's where I've been posting the photos fairly regularly (except for during October- my Instagram 'detox' month! That's a whole other post in the making...). I'm going to share more of them here as I go, too.

I admit that I have started to let go of the Bedhead Project as a daily part of my routine - some days I just have the same old sloppy bun and the same old face and there's nothing new or exciting about that. But then again, maybe that's the whole point of the project - I AM exciting, every day! Because I'm me! What a great thing to be.

Ok, real talk; I just came to that realization as I wrote it... writing can be so good for sorting out your thoughts and realizing some of the damaging self-talk we get ourselves into. I didn't realize I was calling myself boring and "same old same old" until I wrote it out, and that's not a great way to treat myself. It's pretty antithetical to the whole Bedhead Project's purpose; to treat myself as a subject worth photographing, whatever state I find myself in first thing in the morning. Natural and as is.

Which brings me to another 'self love' practice I've been trying to get into: Writing! A few weeks ago I attended a writing workshop for Artist's Wellness, put on by Toronto's Artist Health Alliance. We focused on identity, on the self, on using writing to explore one's inner world. It was a really healing and wonderful workshop. The other attendees were super supportive and created a beautiful, safe space to share your writing in. It reminded me that I used to want to be a writer, before I dove into visual arts. I had forgotten how much I loved writing - also one of the reasons I started a blog way way way way waaaay back when (I've been blogging, I think, since before I was a teenager. Yeesh.).

Writing in a journal most days (because I suck at 'every day' challenges it seems) has been a really great self-love experience. It helps me check in with myself, see how I'm feeling. It also helps me get out of my head without having to reach out or share with others if I don't feel like it (or if they don't feel like it!). I'm exploring different ideas about writing for self love, and I'm curious:

Do you journal? Or heck, do you blog about your life?
What kind of language do you use to talk about yourself, when you write about yourself? What words stand out to you?

Take a second to think about what your language says about how you feel about yourself, how you treat yourself.

xo -k

NEW PROJECT: Bedhead

As an art student I developed an immense appreciation for the human body. In life drawing classes I realized I could find much beauty in the "atypical", "flawed", "unique" bodies of the life models. Through my propensity for art, I value the capturing of "imperfection" in human faces. Crooked noses, textured skin, body hair, scars. I see these in others and love it all.

I use these words: flaw, imperfection, atypical, in quotes, because they are not really how I see them at all. They are unfair descriptors and show just how skewed our perception of beauty is. But what else is new. We all know that in our social context, these are how these traits are seen and described.

As much as I can more easily accept and embrace these traits in the photos and depictions of others, earlier this summer I realized that I still have unrealistic expectations of myself. I see a photo of me and I don't settle for "imperfection". I don't embrace the deep purple circles under my eyes. I don't like the fact that one eye seems droopy in some photos. I don't want to keep photos where my smile is so big you can see funny shadows in my smile. I cringe at photos of my profile. The way my neck and chin look as I gain a bit of weight. This isn't how I feel about myself in real life - but the more photos I see of myself that I don't like, and the more I try to engage in an online world where photos of the self are aplenty, the more my feelings of "imperfection" seep into my day-to-day, outside of photos. I think part of this started when I decided to stop wearing make-up all together. I don't like the feel of makeup, but I stopped liking photos of myself without makeup for a while. I love photos and photography, so this made me feel pretty badly.



So I decided to do something about it. Throughout this summer I have taken photos of myself immediately after I wake in the morning. First thing. Whatever my hair, face, and feelings were doing, I captured it. There is something psychologically empowering, I suspect, about choosing yourself as a subject worthy of photographing. And not just in selfies for instagram, but for my own artistic experiment. I felt excitement. I felt that I loved the photos even though I could see what I normally wouldn't like in myself. My fella got involved, whenever we woke up together, and his photos of me are my favourites. It became an act of self love every morning, and source of love and support from my partner. I've grown so much through this project and am surprised at how much it actually has helped me. At first, I made a point of not publishing the photos. This was a personal practice, a project just for me. How novel in our instagram obsessed world. But now that I've realized how much it impacted me, I want to share my experience.

Here is a small selection of my photos from this summer, and I will continue to post and share them here, as well as on my instagram account.














AND NOW:

I want you to join me - if you'd like? Just once? Maybe twice? This was such a transformative project for me, I imagine it could be for others, too!

I want to see you embrace your unfiltered bedhead and I want to see you become reacquainted with your early-morning, natural self, in whatever form that may be. I don't want another hashtag-no-filter post or a phoney "I woke up like this" comment (though humorously that's exactly what this series is about, ha! The REAL "I woke up like this" type of photo). I want you to do it for you. And if you want to share it online, you can use the hashtag #ellbedhead or share the link to your post in the comments.

Go forth - beautiful bedheads!

ps. I'm nervous to post this because it is such a personal project and a personal experience. Also it's all just photos of me, taken by me.... boring? I don't know. I think it's worth it even if one other person tries this and gets something out of it though, right?