... living life off the (Instagram) grid.

Lessons learned offline and my new life-changing morning routine.

Happy February, friends!

The once-in-a-blue-moon snowfall that happened in Charleston two weeks ago has dissolved and transitioned into gloriously warm weather. It feels like Spring! Supposedly, it won’t stay this way for long, and we are anticipating another snow day at the end of the month, which would be absolute insanity. Let’s hope that doesn’t turn out to be true.

It’s been a little over a month now that I’ve been on my Instagram hiatus. I set my time limit in the app to five minutes per day, and I strictly use that time to hop on every other day and check for any work-related inquiries. If I receive any memes from friends, I open the message just to mark it as read, but I don’t actually view or even hit “like” on the meme. Nine out of ten times they are usually cat memes, and I can quickly find myself in the trenches when it comes to cat content — I don’t even want to pull at that thread. Therefore, I don’t watch anything my friends send me now — sorry, guys! I just know what happens to my brain (and the rest of my body) if I give Instagram content any attention. I refuse to let myself be robbed of my time again. Everyone has their reasons for leaving Instagram/Facebook and there are a lot of commonalities we share, but also differences. I’d love to share mine and maybe someone else running their own business will resonate with these, too.

Why I Left Instagram

My attention span was terrible. I genuinely believe our brains are not meant to consume content at the rapid pace that it’s delivered to us on a platform like Instagram (TikTok is not a point of discussion here because I deleted that app years ago). In all honesty, I actually paid no attention to reading Substack newsletters in full before this year because I could. not. focus. for long enough to get to the end. The same goes for reading books! So instead of sitting with the frustration I felt when trying to focus on long-form reading, I kept turning to the addiction of Instagram and consuming fast-paced content that was numbing me out. My brain said “Avoid. Avoid. Avoid.”

My anxiety always got worse while using it. The heart palpitations, shortness of breath, ruminating thoughts, overthinking interactions/posts/things I said — nothing about Instagram calmed me down.

I got distracted in all the wrong ways. As someone with a photography business and brand, I felt this self-imposed obligation to constantly show up on the app every day to support other small businesses, clients, and photographer friends. I can still be a people pleaser at times and I really did enjoy supporting friends, but there’s a reason companies hire for full-time social media roles — aside from creating my own content, liking, commenting, and sharing other people’s content started to feel like a full-time job! And it ended up taking my focus away from my purpose which is not only photography but also quality of life. I just want my fellow business owner friends to know that even though I’m no longer active on Instagram, I’m always rooting for you and your success!

I was losing time and money… and time is money. Time is our most valuable currency. I lost my mornings and evenings to doom scrolling. I’d end up late to appointments because I lost track of time. My editing projects would take 2 hours longer because I’d pick up my phone every 15 minutes to check Instagram. I’d wish for more hours in the day to get things done. I spent time shopping for things I never needed. All of Instastories is chock full of shopping ads. Even when you opt out of an ad, another will take its place on your phone and live rent-free in your mind. The shopping links constantly piqued my curiosity whether it came from an ad or an influencer post. I’d click and senselessly convince myself that I needed whatever they were selling, absent-mindedly contributing to mass consumerism. This became wasteful in so many ways: physically, monetarily, and environmentally.

I confused comparison for “inspiration”. I think I used to make excuses for keeping myself active on the app by telling myself I found a lot of inspiration there. But honestly, the moments of inspiration were few and far between. Comparison and imposter syndrome were feelings that took over before inspiration ever could, not every time but most of the time. I personally feel more inspired when watching beautiful cinematography in great films and documentaries, when I spend time in nature on a long walk, or while listening to good music. It just took tuning out the noise and tuning into my body to really understand what it needs.

Life felt really noisy. This one should be self-explanatory: At times, the volume of everyone yelling into the void was too much to handle.

It kept old friendships very surface level. I think because I was pretty active on Instastories, some close friends took that at face value and were quick to assume life was going well. But we all should know by now, yes, I’m going to say it, you only see the hIgHLiGhT rEeLs. Sometimes I just wished for a text that asked “How are you really doing?” vs “Looks like everything’s going well based on your posts!!” Do we not know 14 years into Instagram’s existence that there’s more to a person than what they show on their feed? Happiness and pain or sadness can co-exist. I think we need to get better at asking deeper questions that show we care for another person’s well-being. OUT with the passive interactions filled with small talk and IN with intentional, thoughtful questions leading to genuine conversations, please.

Life off the grid

Long story short, I feel f*cking rich. I feel like I’ve been refunded extra hours in the day that I freely and mindlessly gave away to Instagram. I read four books in January. For context, I only read two books in 2024 and both were read within two days in December. One of the books I read, I’m Mostly Here To Enjoy Myself, had a great quote that resonated so hard with me. The book is a memoir written by the author during her one-month holiday in Paris. She deleted Instagram for the month and had a realization from her time off the app, “I’ve moved into an abundance mindset. The fact I’ve kept Instagram off my phone may have something to do with it. It’s easier to experience abundance when you aren’t being bombarded with images of everyone else’s.” Oui, Oui! I felt this!! And for the first time in the last few years of working to adopt an abundance mindset, I finally feel like I can genuinely channel that mentality. I now consume my environment with gratitude.

I walk up to 10k steps per day while listening to podcasts, which in addition to Substack is the way I keep up with what’s going on in the world and with pop culture. Substack newsletters can hold my attention longer than before. I finished three 1000-piece puzzles in January alone (lol it’s always a slow season work-wise). I’ve hosted three dinner parties where I experimented with cooking all new-to-me recipes from cookbooks that have been sitting in my kitchen begging to be opened more. I’ve savored the quality time I have to connect with friends at my dinner table vs at a restaurant where you only have 1.5 hrs to eat. I have way less anxiety and less anxiety means more quality sleep. I’ve been so disciplined with putting my phone away and getting to sleep by 10:30 pm and waking up rested at 7 am every day no matter what’s on the agenda. Consistency (my word of the year) really does work! I haven’t shopped for new clothes because a) I’m not tempted to and b) I don’t need anything.

One thing I didn’t expect to notice a difference with is I am less impulsive with my decision-making. Instagram relies on your engagement and encourages you to act fast. Every brand or business has a CTA aka Call To Action to get you to click and follow through with a purchase. A sale/promo code will expire soon or an influencer’s shopping link will disappear in 24h. I get it! As a business, you gotta do what you gotta do. And I fell for it too fast every time only to be left with buyer’s remorse. Now, from the other side of the grid, I let things like house supplies sit in my cart for a week or more before I decide to hit purchase or remove from the cart. I don’t react to sales and I haven’t browsed for anything since the New Year. The temptations lived in my news feed and I was in need of a major cleanse.

A part of me feared becoming irrelevant or out of the loop. I like to keep my pulse on happenings with the Charleston restaurant scene or updates with the travel industry, but there are other ways to find out that information, too! Hint: Substack newsletters like

Maddie Cleland

’s Weekly Specials and

Jess Kirby

Click. Read. Love. is always packed with great links to current happenings. But also, I’ve found that I actually care less about what I’m “missing”. I can’t be missing something I never knew about. I’m living the meaning of the saying “Ignorance is bliss”.

Last Saturday, I had a fashion campaign photoshoot for a local boutique. It was a 4-hour shoot and the client provided a shot list with some visual inspiration to give me a sense of the vibe and creative direction. In the past before a photoshoot, I would peruse Instagram for inspirational images and this time realized that wasn’t really inspiring anything new for me when it came to how I approach photoshoots. So this time I coached myself into remembering my “Who, What, Why, & How?” Who is the demographic we’re shooting for? What is the client looking to achieve? Why am I choosing this angle/lighting/detail? How do I plan to tell the story based on location/environment? And let me tell ya, I walked away from this shoot feeling SO proud of the fresh photography that I organically captured from my POV. My approach brought me back to the basics and my purpose.

Since I used Instagram a lot for business marketing purposes, moving forward I plan to simply “post and ghost” any new photography work. I will post to the feed, hide the likes (I’ve always done this), and only respond to comments from my desktop (24 hours after posting), and then I’m back off the app. I will treat my grid as an extension of my photography portfolio just so other brands and past and future clients know that I’m still alive and working lol.

Replacing doom scrolling with a better morning routine

At the start of the year when I decided to make CONSISTENCY my theme/word for 2025, I made a daily morning checklist in my notes app. Here’s how my mornings go, in order:

The fifth book I started reading is Atomic Habits. I made this list a month before starting this book, but it was reassuring to read James Clear's point that forming good habits is about changing your systems. Before this daily checklist, my workouts were done in my empty dining room. I’d wake up, grab my phone, scroll through Instagram for an hour or more, wash my face, brush my teeth, put on activewear, and go downstairs to my kitchen to make matcha and I’d just stare at the empty dining room delaying my workout. It’s hard to feel motivated after doom-scrolling my way into a little depression first thing in the morning.

Now that a dining table occupies that workout space, I’ve changed my system! I brought my workout gear (resistance bands, 2lb - 10lb dumbbells, pilates ball, and mat) up to my bedroom closet. I find that the first six items on my checklist can all be done before I leave my bedroom. So now after I wake up, I reach for my phone to play a daily guided meditation in the Calm app, get up out of bed to sit in front of my floor-length mirror (in my pajamas), and do some full-body stretching, and move my way right into a workout. I lift 10lb weights or turn on an 8-10 minute Assembly workout. For me, I do not need a 30-minute - 1 hr workout every day if I’m already planning a walk as well (2-3 days a week I’ll make it to a 50-minute Pilates class which is within walking distance of my house — bonus points). Sometimes, I don’t even put on workout clothes when I do a 10-minute workout in my room. I do not dry brush every day, only on the days that I wash my hair, which is every two days. However, the cold shower gives me life! I used to think the concept was insane, but I’ve now experienced how much of a mood booster it can be. Basically, I start the shower with hot water (not scalding hot), and then for the last 2-3 minutes, I switch it to cold. It helps me focus on my breath and wakes up all the senses. It feels amazing, and I become a much chipper, sharper person throughout the day because of it. And for those who have never met me, prior to cold showers it was not a daily mood for me to be super chipper hah.

Morning Pages is a concept taken from The Artist’s Way, which is a book I started in January. The idea is simply about filling up three blank pages in a journal with your stream of consciousness. The sentences/thoughts don’t have to make sense or be connected. This practice is primarily supposed to help you empty out the nonsense so you can mentally make room for creativity. There were some days that I forgot to do this and I absolutely noticed the difference. I like to do it before reading a book so that my head is clear and I can give the book in front of me my full attention without any distracting thoughts carrying over from the day before or about the day ahead.

This entire morning routine takes me about 1.5 - 2 hours, which is just about the same amount of time I previously spent doom scrolling Instagram! Can you even believe it? I think back to when I thought there weren’t enough hours in the day and see the answer now. There were always enough hours in the day, I just had to choose how and where I wanted to spend those hours wisely.