One year without Instagram.

Today, May 12th 2014, marks the one year anniversary of my Instagram account being stolen. It is also my birthday. I remember it very clearly. On May 12th 2014 I was about to post my photo and thoughts of the day as I usually do. I was sitting right on my parent’s couch on a sunday morning. I went to open Instagram on my phone and I was logged out for some reason.

I didn’t think anything of it. I just thought I got logged out some how. I tried to log in a few times thinking I might have entered my password wrong or something, but could not get in. I entered my email to get a password reset sent to my email and it said my email did not exist. My username didn’t even exist. I contacted Instagram through their help page. I got one email back from them asking for more details to verify who I was so they could help me out and got no response for 24hrs. Over the next few days I sent a few more emails…….nothing. No response. I just gave up.

I decided maybe this happened for a reason. Why let it get to me? Why let it get under my skin? It sucked. It really sucked, but it honestly was for the better. I started to blog more often on my website. When I lost my Instagram account, I wanted to continue a project I was doing on there, but in a bigger sense, so I used my blog to expand it and make it a bit more serious using higher resolution images. That’s how my Fragments Project was born. It even led to me having my first full gallery in January of 2014. I also became part of a cool team through Pressgram. Now that my focus has been on publishing to my own website for the past year, I became inspired to write even more. I am about to release my very first book about blogging and publishing. The list goes on and on.

After Instagram was taken from me, I was either left to start over on Instagram or start something new. Starting something new was intimidating, but in the long run, it was the best choice I made. I loved the Instagram community and I miss it dearly, but it’s nice to know there is more our there. There is more outside of my phone. Not only am I not on Instagram anymore, I am also not on Facebook anymore either. As I have left things behind in my life, it has allowed more things to enter.

Better things. Things I allow to enter.

So here’s to a new year in my life. Here’s to another year without Instagram. Here’s to 26 years on planet Earth.

All of the prints in the image were shot with my iPhone, and printed with the Mpix app.
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