I’ve Taken Thousands of Photos This Year. I’ve Barely Looked at Any of Them.

Documenting your life and living it are two different jobs

I was catching up with a friend on Whatsapp recently and she asked me why I haven’t posted more about my LATAM adventures on Instagram.

What I wanted to say was: “Because I’m busy BEING”

But she’s a dear friend and a sweetheart and also someone who posts A LOT so I wanted to be careful with my response.

And honestly I felt a bit defensive, like there is something wrong with me for not wanting to post every landscape, every tourist site, every experience, every cafe, etc.

I have to justify why I am not using something which I believe isn’t very good for me.

Because, though it sounds dramatic, I’ve totally redefined my relationship with my phone and with social media the past couple of years. I’m really proud of it and I am so much happier for it.

Living your life and documenting your life are 2 separate jobs, and right now I only have time and headspace for one.

Especially if the invisible audience in my head is changing how I experience my own life.

Like, who are the moments we’re documenting for?

Are you taking a picture because you want to remember a beautiful moment, you want to capture something unexpected, or you think it would look great on Instagram?

I’m living a once-in-a-lifetime experience (writing this from the most beautiful village in the Sacred Valley in Peru).

I don’t want to be in the most beautiful scenery with my nose in my phone, because I’m editing reels and videos, or checking if my posts got enough likes.

I want to be fully present with my hubby, I want to be fully present in the experience.

So from the get-go I was very intentional that I didn’t want to spend my life on Instagram, or worse, trying to engineer experiences so I could take pictures or videos of them.

Taking a photo because you plan to share it can actually make you enjoy the experience less, while taking the exact same photo just for yourself doesn’t have that effect.

That’s because the moment you plan to post it, you switch off from whatever is currently happening and start thinking about that invisible audience in your head.

Barasch, Zauberman and Diehl found this across 5 separate studies published in the Journal of Consumer Research in 2018.

The same researchers also found that taking photos makes a positive experience more enjoyable since we’re paying more attention to what’s in front of us.

But the problem isn’t the camera, it’s who you’re already performing for.

And I’m not pretending to be a monk here. I’m trying to be all grown and evolved and matured, but this is not coming from a smug place, this is coming from someone who was admittedly addicted to Instagram and still finds it so hard to resist the urge to look at the data. Did people see it, did they like it, etc.

I got hooked during the pandemic: memes, music, news, etc. I did not have the energy to keep in touch with people, so that was my way of expressing my fears, my frustrations, without actually messaging people.

The rethink didn’t come from some clean “aha” moment.

It came slowly, messily, from therapy and journaling and, the big one, giving up alcohol.

I had drifted, from myself, from my goals, from my actual life, and the correlation was obvious: every hour on the app was an hour I wasn’t spending on what actually mattered to me.

I don’t blame the platform entirely, these were strange times.

So I stopped performing for it, started redirecting that energy inward, and I slowly shifted my focus from what others were doing to what I was doing.

That’s when things started to change.

I have had a million incredible experiences on this trip, it’s been everything I was expecting but so much more: farniente on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, carnival in Barranquilla, celebrating Mexico’s goal with my new favourite people, being in the Andes now trying to figure out if it’s an alpaca or a llama.

Honestly at times I felt like I was living in a movie.

Back in April in Guatemala, my hubby and I were having a coffee outside a church when a female tourist set up her tripod and did the full Sound of Music twirl with her skirt.

And my first instinct was that cringe, you know?

But then I caught myself. Because she’s not the problem. She’s just responding to a system that told her that her experiences only count if they look a certain way.

That the memory only sticks if it gets likes, that she needs to perform the joy, feeling it is not enough.

I’ve been her. Most of us have.

People probably feel a lot of that pressure when choosing their vacation destination spots, being instagrammable, the outfits they bring, where they stay and go for dinners, so they can post content.

I find the idea so sad.

So I have taken thousands of photos and videos over the past 7 months, but I’ve barely had the time to look at them. We’ll be back in Singapore in less than 3 months, and there’ll be plenty of time then to go through pictures and make pretty reels. For now I just want to be.

So if you’re feeling the pressure for your summer to look, rather than feel, a certain way, this is your cue to zoom out.

You’re still allowed to take the photo, the question is simply: who is the photo for?

Take it because the light is insane and you want to remember that exact moment.

Take it because your hubby is laughing and you never want to forget that face.

Take it because YOU want it, not because someone else is waiting for it.

Notice which is which.

Post the reel, make the pretty grid, AND still have had the day fully for yourself.

And if you’re like me, that means mismatched outfits, silly hats, no makeup, a little gut hanging out joyfully, with the biggest smile on your face, absolutely not a camera flash in sight.

The Unwritten Check-In

This week’s bare minimum: Let 1 thing go 100% undocumented this week, or take 1 photo of the experience but don’t post it online (buy a frame and print it instead).

Ask yourself: Would I still choose this, wear this, visit this or photograph this if nobody else would ever see it? Am I here, or am I already posting this?

With love,

Noemie x

P.S. I’d love to know! What’s 1 experience you’ve kept just for yourself lately? No caption, no likes, just 100% yours. Hit reply, I’m all ears from my little corner of the Andes :)

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Key Sources

Alixandra Barasch, Gal Zauberman and Kristin Diehl, ‘How the Intention to Share Can Undermine Enjoyment: Photo-Taking Goals and Evaluation of Experiences’, Journal of Consumer Research, 44/6 (2018), pp. 1220–37 <https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucx112>.

Kristin Diehl, Gal Zauberman and Alixandra Barasch, ‘How Taking Photos Increases Enjoyment of Experiences’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 111/2 (2016), pp. 119–40 <https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000055>.

Noemie Mooney is an ACE Certified Health Coach, ICF-trained Behaviour Change Specialist, certified yoga instructor, and creator of the MAKE SPACE Method™. Trained in design thinking at the Stanford d.school, she writes Unwritten Potential, a newsletter about evidence-based wellbeing, sustainable habits, mental wellbeing, and health behaviour change for smart, health-curious people who want to feel their best without making it a full-time job.

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