I’ve recently decided to get off of social media. One of the big reasons is that social media has a toxic culture, in my opinion, of comparison and competition. Seeing how everyone else’s life looks from the outside (which is not a realistic representation of everyday life anyway,) can cause one’s own life to look a little less shiny in comparison. While I didn’t necessarily see this happening to me, I could see how subconsciously it might affect me negatively without me realizing it.

The main reason I decided to ditch Facebook and Instagram, though, is that I’ve made so many drastic changes in my life over the past year, and to be honest, I don’t really feel like explaining all of those changes to people who aren’t genuinely part of my life outside of social media.

Over the past year, I deconstructed my faith and left the Evangelical Christian Church. Cory and I opened our marriage, and ultimately decided to separate when we discovered that we weren’t romantically attracted to each other anymore. I’ve moved out, and Cory and I have transitioned to a friendly, supportive, and loving co-parenting relationship.

I also met and fell in love with someone else. RJ is someone who came into my life like a wrecking ball (in the best way). It was fireworks and a deep connection from the start, and he immediately became an extremely important part of my life. He is now my boyfriend and nesting partner, and we are making plans for our future together.

So to be genuine about who I am now and what my life is like would be a big shock to many people on my social media accounts—yet those people aren’t truly part of my life enough for me to take the time to tell them about what’s been going on with me in a more personal way. The people who are in my life know about these things already, so what’s the point?

I decided that it would be easier to just walk away from those platforms. But now, I’m finding myself with the urge to still post my favorite pictures and memories of my day-to-day life and special moments, and I have nowhere to do that. So, even though only a few people ever read this, I’m going to start doing that here. I like to be able to look back at the things I wrote—and now the pictures I’ll post here. Every month, I’ll do a photo dump and maybe write a little bit about the things I’ve been up to.

For this first post, since it’s been quite a while since I’ve been able to post on Instagram, I will do a photo dump from the past several months. 🙂 Enjoy!