Instagrammatic

Sometimes I look back and think

‘golly, what was it like in the days when you ate dinner without publishing a sepia-toned photo of chicken to all of your 400 closest friends?’

But mostly, I just love Instagram. If I were a bacon sandwich (if only), Instagram would be the ketchup. If I were a block of delicious wensleydale cheese, Instagram would be the little bits of cranberry. AND SO ON.

I don’t care that it started as a hipster-chic pretentious vintage love letter to the polaroid. I don’t care that every day, I look at photographs of breakfast and listen to about fifty people going on about how perfect the butter-spreadage is (‘WHERE did you get that carton of margarine? I must have!’). I don’t even care that Zuckerberg got hold of it in the end, as he was bound to, and put his signature stamp of over-share all over it.

I put photos on Instagram most days. Which means that I’ve got a long window back into any old day in the past year. That’s true of all photo collections, of course, but I love looking at my Instagram roll because every photograph is a snapshot I bothered to publish – I wanted to remember it at the time. In a year in which our family has changed by the day, having a record of it is precious to me.

Here’s my year in thirty Instagrams (indulge me). It was supposed to be two per month, but you have no idea how hard it was to whittle it down. Unfortunately the quality of my photographs has worsened as my phone has gathered more teeth-marks.

I SO loved putting that together. That’s why I take photographs in such abundance. To be reminded on grotty weekends that, actually, what I have here is pretty wonderful.

And here’s the thing: I’d really like to see yours. Want to join in? Use the image at the top of this post and send me a link when you’re done, at rach.makealongstoryshort (@) gmail.com. I’ll do a little round-up of everyone’s before the end of the year. It doesn’t have to be thirty photos – I’ve been sick and have had plenty of browsing time, so scale it down as you wish.

It does us good, I think, as we come into December again, to remember how lovely things are a lot of the time. Or sometimes, how painfully unlovely. Whatever kind of year you’ve had, it’s your life experience. So own it and Instagram the heck out of it, my loves.

Happy reminiscing!

(Join us @makealongstoryshort for daily filter abuse.)