Your Bumpy, Blurry, Perfectly-Proportionate Next Chapter
When Instagram causes an identity crisis.
It’s the beginning of January and I’m sitting on the edge of my bed, staring down at the phone in my hands. I’d purposefully not let myself lie down; this was to be quick. If only it were ever that simple.
Looking at the phone hurt and I hated it.
I’d downloaded Instagram. Again. I just needed to see how a campaign I’d helped with came out. You know, gauge how the message came together, check how it landed. Super quick. Log in, log out. I even tried to skip the lure of the feed by clicking straight to my profile.
I knew I shouldn’t scroll, but I did.
What I found made me sad. The guy looking up at me seemed… happy. I know he wasn’t, but damn he must’ve been a little to be able to act like that, right? That wasn’t the worst of it, though. The part that stabbed me in the gut was when I began scrolling through my feed after finally managing to tear myself away from my old posts. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing—the style of it, the content, the people, the aesthetic… all of it was outdoorsy and lifestyle-driven. It was like a time capsule full of faces I haven’t seen in years, names I haven’t heard from. Still sitting on the edge of my bed, I looked up at the wall and felt my head start shaking.
What... what the fuck am I even doing anymore?
Why???
Looking back down at my phone, I noticed how easy it was to scroll myself into feeling like shit. Grateful for the distance I’d created between myself and the feed over the past few years, I exhaled and picked up my book.
The next morning was full of rain. And that felt… fitting. I was still thinking about my Instagram-induced identity crisis from the night before. Drops fell with thuds on top of mounds of half-frozen slush, forming craters and puddles in the sidewalk. Things have been frigid recently, so every square-inch of ground outside was covered in thick, clear ice.
Holding my umbrella, I surprised even myself when I smiled. I’d gone out begrudgingly. Then I almost immediately ate shit on my front steps.
That tracks.
For a second, I felt a lot like Harry and Marv from the movie Home Alone. I slipped, grabbing the railing, feet still running in place on the frozen concrete below. So I went back for a pair of nano-spikes.
Then I went for a walk.
That’s what I usually do first-thing in the morning; walk. I started doing it as a remote worker before COVID, as a way to mimic a commute. I get up, shower, make coffee, and take a lap around the block. There’s typically a podcast involved, sometimes music, but when I get back, I grab a mug and get to work. Then, at the end of the day, I do another lap for my “evening commute.”
My therapist calls these little rituals “bookends.” I like to think of them as anchors. But I haven’t been doing them lately. I know they’re good for me, I just kind of... fell off. So, this morning while pulling the studded, spikey straps over my boots to keep from slipping on the ice, I thought of a conversation I had with a friend over the summer. It was about getting comfortable with starting something over. Like going back to the gym for the first time after not going for a while. It’s so much easier to keep going than to start at day one again.
Cinching my hood in place before setting out, I made my peace with starting over again.
As I walked, I thought about the other parts of myself I’d let fall by the wayside. Like running. After recovering from a mental health crisis about 10 years ago, running had become a staple in how I’d learned to show up for myself. I remember when I first moved across the country to Wyoming in my early twenties, it was a new coworker who’d offered to take me on a local run. She’d pulled up Strava to show me the loop we’d be doing. After that, I started running it religiously (same with using the app).
For years I treated the activity descriptions in Strava like journal entries. That’s why I kept my account private back then. It’s more social now, I guess, but it used to be far more focused on tracking personal stats. At least, it was for me. Eventually, though, I unlocked my profile so I could connect with other people—but not before going through and clipping out all of those journal entries.
I felt myself sigh. Walking along the sidewalk, I stepped squarely on a patch of ice with my spikes. Firm, confident. Then, my foot punched through into the water.
You’re kidding me…
I thought it to myself before realizing I wasn’t even upset. I actually laughed because, sure I was walking around my suburban neighborhood in the rain… but there were so many times when my mornings had been spent wet and cold from dark walks up big mountains. Those memories came flooding back, no doubt aided by my Instagram scrolling the night prior. And now, here I was, standing in a puddle on the sidewalk on day one of going on morning walks again…
At the time, I’d called my little Strava diary series to myself “Run On Thoughts.” It felt clever, since I’d been known to ramble about big ideas and meaning—especially in those old Instagram captions. Turns out I’ve been a writer this whole time...
Arriving on the corner of my street, I carefully dodged a puddle while thinking about how distinct the chapters of my life have felt. I can so clearly see their bookends in hindsight. The transitions, though bumpy—and even downright blurry—at the time, seem perfectly proportionate now. My grin widened as I walked. Much like a good book, I realized, each one had moved the plot forward.
I stuck with that running/Strava-journaling habit for years; through career transitions, injuries, breakups, and all the miles of coping with getting sober. I remember cities I’ve traveled to for work by the running routes I snuck in there. When I think of the last decade of my life, I chunk the chapters and memories by countless trail runs, mountain biking trips, backcountry snowboarding days, and frontcountry wanderings by the waterfront.
I trained, gained, and sustained a lot of life that way.
Yet, through it all, I wrote those little journal entries in the activity descriptions on Strava. I distinctly remember back when those started—with that after-work-loop in Wyoming—I dreamed one day, maybe, that I’d be brave enough to start writing things like that publicly. Every single time, at the end of my run, and just before hitting “save.”
Back from my walk, I opened the door and gratefully stepped inside. Taking off my boots, it dawned on me: that’s what this chapter’s been about—the one thing that’s been in all of them. Writing. I suppose, these last few years, those “Run On Thoughts” became something else entirely. They evolved.
Given the right container, they’ve grown.
First, they unfolded into a weekly newsletter. Then, as I dared to share more of myself, they became essays. Most recently, though, my writing habit transformed again when I set out to publish a daily column. Today was day 133 in a row of writing stories like this one. And people keep reading, thanks to you.
Sometimes you can’t tell the difference between longing and languishing until you get to the other side. While you wait, walking seems like the best thing to do if you ask me. Because then it’s not really waiting at all… not when you can turn it into something else entirely.
Walking makes it a transition, and that’s how you arrive at your bumpy, blurry, perfectly-proportionate next chapter.
onward.
If you enjoyed reading and want more of this kind of thing, I write short reflections like it each day as part of my daily column.
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Great essay, Derek. Really enjoy your writing.