A Break(up).

It didn’t begin as a bad relationship.

They rarely do.

They begin with butterflies and then slowly, over time, once you’ve spent enough time with them, you see parts of them you didn’t see at the beginning. These parts you either learn to accept, like, or love, or you discover that they’re not a healthy part you want to live with.

This “relationship” I could no longer live with. After I put up with how awful it made me feel, and how it negatively affected my perception of myself and the world, I decided it was time for a break.

Instagram and I broke up.

Our “relationship” first began in the summer of 2013. I was late on the bandwagon from the get go, but I remember distinctly the first photo that I uploaded, a magazine quote by Kelly Osborne:

“You’ll never fall in love until you let someone love you the way you deserve to be loved.”

Not quite knowing what I was about to get myself into, as I’m sure everyone else was also thinking, I excitedly played along with the masses in my eagerness to post photos of my last lunch and all my summer selfies.

For years, I had already been doing this, documenting my life behind the lens of a camera. I plowed through my fair share of cameras, feeling like the OG when it came to taking photos of my life and my many adventures. Then the iPhone came out with wicked camera capabilities, making it even easier to share photos, and old fashioned click cameras became a thing of the past.

And that’s what I initially liked about Instagram: it was a photo sharing app.

But like with most social media companies, it exploded with the masses and quickly grew into one of the biggest and most profitable social media apps in the world.

Its purpose, whilst still remaining a photo sharing app, advanced, becoming a more profitable platform where companies could profit off Instagram’s connection with the millions of people using it, all on one channel.

Like with most things in my life, the more popular it became, the more I came to dislike it.

We live in a world where we obsess over other people. And if it’s not obsession with other people, it’s our consumption with what other people think of us.

Social media makes it easy for people to obsess over other people because all we see is the carefully curated parts of people’s lives, the best photos, the edited ones that manipulate sensitive people like me into believing that our lives don’t compare to those whom we obsess over. Instagram’s image often neglects to display the messy parts of our personal journeys that have the most impact on our growth. It uses incentives to manipulate users into posting photos that they will likely receive more attention over.

A photo of me ugly crying in my bed or a pic of me in my cherry red bikini? We all know which one will get more attention.

When I’m busy scrolling, I start to feel like an ugly, sad, potato sack because I get so lost with everyone else I’m seeing, forgetting everything I’ve done and created. What happens is I, and I’m sure other people, end up trying harder to be like them because according to material statistics, like followers and likes, what they’re doing is successful. We end up neglecting the careful curation of our own lives, the ones filled with messy bits and pieces because these perfect online personalities look so much better than real life.

How much time do you spend focusing on other people instead of yourself and your happiness?

There are a lot of parts of social media that I have problems with. It has a negative impact on self-esteem, it carries an empire of “influencers” (which is essentially a popularity contest built on the grounds of attractiveness, social media smarts, and ability to captivate audiences with clever captions and photo-shopped pictures), it profits off selling user’s information (which we all agreed to in their contract, but is still morally wrong), this new definition of beauty they’ve created (which has to do with aesthetic perfection), the culture it facilitated where people are increasingly losing their ability to communicate with other humans, and this toxic hold it has over users who are now living their lives through a screen.

I know, know, that there are benefits to social media, but it feels like me saying “there are benefits to this bad relationship- the sex is great!”

And there are profiles out there on social media that use this platform to inspire and educate, that use their influence to do good for other people, encouraging followers to own their story and be themselves, but I cannot get over the fact that at the end of the day, it’s likes, comments, and shares that determine the “success” of who these people are.

So if all of our value is wrapped up in other people’s validation, what makes you you?

And that’s just it: social media is just not for me.

I broke up with Instagram because I didn’t like the way it made me feel. Am I sensitive? Yes. Am I insecure? But of course, I’m only human.

I have never felt anything but negative thoughts of envy, unhappiness, and low self esteem whenever I’ve been on Insta. When I do get the occasional set of butterflies, it’s when my crush likes one of my photos, or when it gets a lot of likes, which just further perpetuates this feeling of needing that validation.

Social media doesn’t tell the whole story, and my whole thing is about telling the whole story. My story has never been about following the same path as other people, and so I’m trusting my feelings and limiting my time with it for the betterment of my health, and ultimately my success.

Despite what social media sells, this “platform for change and development”, it’s really a fake front that’s in the business of making money.

I took four months off from Instagram and after the initial itches I had to post photos of the incredible moments of my summer, like the salmon I caught, or the outfit pic I was proud of, I learned instead to just live my life, not obsess about posting this… proof that I had a good one.

I’m not completely broken up from Instagram’s addictive hold, but I contain the power now because I know the ugly side of the photo -shopped front, and it won’t be long before I make the final move to break up with it once and for all.

Sometimes, things must end in order for new and better things to begin.

And what a glorious beginning it has been already.

Do You See What Icy?

This Alaskan tale begins with a classic squat in the woods.

It was Krull family day, which is the one day a week the entire family has time off to spend together. Temperatures had begun their rise back up into the seventies and hiking was, without question, the activity we all agreed upon.

Taking my dad’s suggestion, we headed out to Whittier to explore a trail we hadn’t yet walked our hiking shoes upon: Portage Pass Trail.

Whittier is an especially spectacular town only accessible by sea through Prince William Sound, by plane, or through the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel, a 13,300 ft tunnel that straight shoots its way through Maynard Mountain and provides the only land access to town (and also happens to be the second-longest highway tunnel in North America- snaps for Alaska!).

After passing through the tunnel, we took the first right and found ourselves in a crowded lot. Seems we weren’t the only ones anxious for a hike on this super sunny day.

If there’s one thing I really don’t care for when it comes to hiking, it’s people. And there were LOTS of them.

It’s actually quite uncommon to run into other hikers in Alaska, for the trail system is quite expansive. But Whittier is a tourist town, a port of call for cruise ships and I don’t know if this particular hike is plastered across “things to do in Alaska”, but there were LOTS of people, most of which were out of towners.

Which brings me to my squat in the woods. I was in dire need of a restroom, and what most Alaskans appreciate is the expanse of outdoors to do your business in. Well, it would’ve been easy to just pop a squat, but there were people, LOTS of them, remember?

I managed to find a gap in the line of hikers, did my business, then resumed hiking up up up.

Portage Pass Trail has got to be one of the most breathtakingly beautiful trails I’ve experienced in Alaska. And that says a lot. Aside from the people (ugh, the people), you walk up a mountain with the deep blue of Passage Canal behind you, and Portage Glacier ahead of you.

It was difficult to stay sour at the abundance of people clogging the trail when the vision of one of the most iconic Alaskan glaciers stood proudly in the midst of the mountains.

A glacier which, like many glaciers, is retreating at a rapid pace.

I’ve visited Portage before, years ago, and can vividly remember what it looked like, which was a much different sight then the ice structure I saw on this hike. The change was visible.

Having been there for tens and thousands of years, it’s natural for glaciers to melt, but not at the increasing rate in which they are now. This year alone, Alaska has shattered previous heat records, and we’re all watching as our state slowly burns and our glaciers melt.

After walking the two miles to arrive at the lake’s edge, ice chunks floating just below me, I could not get over this profound beauty and the sadness I felt at how different it looked from when I saw it from boat view, about ten years ago. Having lunch in a spot that not fifty years back was caked with ice put into perspective the urgency and realness of climate change and its effect on our land and its natural structures.

I later found out that Portage Pass Trail, dubbed “A Passage Through Time”, is the only established trail with a view of Portage Glacier, which is a huge draw for not only tourists, but locals like myself too.

Walking back, I came to appreciate the many hikers, silently thanking them for wanting to visit such a rare beauty, feeling appreciation for Alaska and her magnetic pull on visitors and residents.

It’s important that people see with their own eyes that our being here on earth, and how we are treating it, has an effect. And it won’t be long before stunning structures like glaciers will be a thing of the past.

Icy warmer weather up ahead, so hikers, please, PLEASE enjoy the outdoors as I do, for the times they are a changing and there might not be glaciers in the future.

I just ask that I still have privacy when I need to pop the occasional squat…