I might be having a hard time…
with my apartment being my home/office/restaurant/bar/theater/gym/coffeeshop. Mostly because I don’t know what else to say about it on the internet. What a shame 🙄
I went to post a photo of my besocked feet surrounded by sneakers and a water bottle with a variation of the above, then I deleted it. I took a sweaty selfie and laughed as I typed out “at-home workouts have me looking like a glazed donut.” I deleted that also.
I kept asking, “who for?”
I knew it couldn’t be myself; posting about a workout on Instagram has rarely made me want to work out the next day. Because I already posted the same thing yesterday, I reason. And isn’t the post the same as working out? So I ask, yet again, “who for?”
I’m so full of questions these days, that I can’t bear to answer another one. So, DELETE. If it feels weird, then it just might be weird, and it’s okay to avoid it for weirdness’ sake.
Then I realized something quite nifty: I felt more interested in writing here than I did in making a passing joke about it on sosh media. Somehow, writing about the absolute wreckage of my arm muscles after a few pushups feels more aligned than a bicep shot. I’ll happily wax about the sourdough muffintop that’s rising out of the waistband of my jeans. Sharing that with an image feels...well, it feels self-indulgent.
I’m expanding and contracting in new ways, and none of it feels like a story I can tactfully tell with visual aids. My humor just can’t keep up. Or, maybe it’s that I perceive Instagram as a duality: either I am self-deprecating, or I am self-aggrandizing. Neither of these make sense for my workouts or my non-workouts or my concern over making my home into all the possible things I might have to use it for. Painter’s studio? Sex dungeon? Breakfast cookie bakery?
I still don’t know the formula for what sharing online looks like for me, and I think that’s okay. My likeness is not currently my form of income, which is a great relief since I tried to make a Tik Tok video this week and nearly melted into magma from embarrassment.
Perhaps next time, when I feel myself asking “who for?”, there might be a pain that needs addressed or a shoulder that needs a little pat.
But it doesn’t have to happen online.
Next Steps: Drink a glass of water, take the morning off of Instagram, and keep your bread-to-workout ratio at whatever ratio you need it to be.
"Who for?" she asks into the void