What my Instagram doesn't tell you

You have no idea how many incomplete drafts I currently have on my blog. For the past week I'd been meaning to blog about a few things but I never got round to finishing the posts. Eheh, sorray. I hope I'll get the chance to finish them soon enough, but for now there's this one liiittle thing that I want to talk about.

Actually this matter has been niggling at the back of my mind for quite a while now because of the things that I've been hearing from some people. To be honest, I'm a bit uncomfortable and insecure about this topic so it's rather awkward to be talking about it on such a public platform. But I just want to get this off my chest and clarify some things for my own sake, so please bear with me.

I'm not gonna beat around the bush: it's about my Instagram and the impressions that people get from it. (This is harder than I thought it would be; it's actually painful to type out these words.) I know I shouldn't care so much about what other people think of me, but..... I can't help it la. It does bother me to a certain extent; and though I know that I can't please everyone, I don't want people to get the wrong impression of me. (N.B. Neuroticism 101)

Some people scroll through my Instagram feed and come up with all sorts of conclusion about me and my life. The most popular one being that I'm (ughhh, here it comes, drum rolls please).... high maintenance. Okay fine, to some degree, I admit that I am. It literally took me years to come to terms with this about myself, so don't poke me. But!!! If you don't know me personally, trust me when I say that I'm not as bad as you think I am. 

And some people get the idea that I'm always properly dressed or that I have so many clothes to wear that I rarely wear the same thing more than once. Nooooooo. There's an art to this! I mix and match my clothes with different pants and scarves all the time so that they make up different outfits. Either that, or I simply don't post a picture of myself wearing the same outfit on a different day. Please la percaya, I'll give you lollipop. In real life, I'm actually biasa je, honestly. How I portray myself on Instagram is just one side of me. And I have like, 30 different versions of myself, maybe even more haha. So please don't make rash judgments about me from the pictures I post on the site.

Some people treat Instagram like a diary. They post about day-to-day stuff, so you know where they go and what they're up to on a typical day. And that's totally fine. I'm not criticising them or anything, I actually enjoy the way their pictures would tell a story. But here's the thing: I don't do that. 

I choose what I want to show people on my Instagram. I choose the angles, the filters, the lighting. I choose the pictures in which I look good. I only post pictures of events when I'm nicely dressed, my face is made up, and my scarf looks neat. That's hardly surprising. I choose to post pictures of my outfits only when I actually make an effort to dress up – which is not that often! I choose to show the good moments – and even then, not all of them. Only some. Bottomline is, you only see really small snippets of my life; all handpicked, all filtered, all carefully curated.

To put it quite bluntly, my Instagram shows the polished version of my life – the nice clothes I wear (at least I think they're nice anyway), the beautiful places I visit, the delicious food I eat –, but it doesn't tell you a lot of things.

It doesn't tell you that I always just stay in with pimple cream on my face. It doesn't tell you that I'd much rather go to a warung or mamak to eat, rather than fancy places (I mean, it is fun to go to fancy places once in a while, but when it comes down to it, it's the warung's and mamak's that I miss the most when I'm in London). It doesn't show you how selekeh I look like 90% of the time. It doesn't tell you that I am the laziest dresser when it comes to uni. It doesn't show you how I act/behave around the people I'm comfortable with. And it certainly doesn't tell you how petite I actually am in real life – people always terkejut when they see me in person because I look so tall in pictures. (I wanted to state my actual height but that would take the fun out of things.) If there's a few things that my Instagram feed does tell you about me, it might be: (a) my taste, (b) how I view the world, and (c) how weird I am.

You're probably wondering about the last point. At the expense of you judging me, let me try to explain.

You see, I'm very attentive to the aesthetics and appearance of my Instagram layout. Basically the colours in all of the pictures need to go well with each other. If the colours clash, I'll delete one of the pictures. If a picture makes my feed look dark, it has to go. I've deleted pictures with friends a few times and some of them got so annoyed that their picture's suddenly gone, hahaha. I don't know why it bothers me so much. It's stupid, but it kind of gives me peace of mind. I'm just... weird that way. So, kesimpulannya, my Instagram looks good not because my life is 'perfect' or anything, it only looks good because I'm obsessive. There really is nothing else to it. Hahaha capisce?

I admit that it's partly my fault. I should've known that people would misinterpret what I portray as 'my life', because I've been in that position where I made assumptions about others' lives, too. I never intended to deceive or mislead people by any means. Bukannya nak tunjuk that my life is better than yours or whatever. I'm sorry if it ever came off that way, but I promise you, that's never my intention. I share what I want to share, maybe even spread some good and happy vibes to others while I'm at it. I just didn't realise that it would give people the wrong impression.

What you see on my Instagram is probably 10% of who I am as a person. There's a lot that you don't know about me, so I'm asking you to please be mindful of any assumptions that you make if you don't personally know me. Honestly, I'm just an average Jane! Biasa jeee.

As a friend said to me once, "Tu la you, upload gambar lawa lawa lagi." Hahaha. Padan muka.

Peace out everybody, take care xxx