ODD

I am actually starting to dislike my favourite past time activity: scrolling Instagram newsfeed. It's gradually looking a lot like a pretentious social scheme. What is worse is that I've been relying on it for extra income. And I now, find myself... reliant. Looking at all the other louder or more interesting personalities on my timeline, I can't help but face some odd mini identity crisis. Now I begin to fathom why I have friends who chose to delete or stay away from Instagram to salvage/protect their self esteem.

It's hard to suppress the growing fear in you when you realise the exposure of all these personalities has unknowingly, perhaps, led to the slight dilution of your personality. Ok, let me try to make this clearer but giving you a scenario: let's just say you're running a restaurant and your business has been amazing with the marketing strategy you've been employing for the last few months. Suddenly, these new restaurants start to swoop in, and they are doing equally well with different marketing strategies... this is when naturally you'd be tempted with questions like, "Am I still doing this right?" "How do I stay differentiated?" "Am I still relevant?"

Recently, I did a feature for L'officiel (out in March) and one of the questions was, how did I get noticed (as a blogger) and I earnestly replied, "Just because I blog, I don't like being labelled as a blogger or influencer because I'm no Gandhi to influence. Also, famous is subjective. I think I just happen to be a lucky girl whose content happen to pique the interest of others." 

As much as my friends think I'm goofy and fun to be around, there's only so much I can show through the squares on Instagram and they are called still images for a reason. People choose to see what they wish to see anyway. The Irina you've in mind might probably be very different from the real Irina. People subconsciously build ideas of others from the little information they garner in their head, which is why some people stop liking their crush after getting to know them because the idea of them is far more attractive and appealing. There's nothing wrong with it. In fact, it's normal. I do it too. It's just that... what if the real Irina does not live up to the idea of Irina you have in your mind because the real Irina is only human and she's flawed.

Thank God, this space still offers me a comfortable amount of clarity.








Edited @12:05AM: People say artists shouldn't apologise for their art and I should probably not apologize for the incoherency of this post, but I feel sorry for my inability to put this post in a more comprehensive way that clearly projects my thoughts aloud.