“WHAT’S THAT THING YOU’RE DOING ON INSTAGRAM?”

Dear Reader,

You probably don’t know this because you probably don’t follow me on Instagram (I don’t blame you), but I’ve been posting a picture every day since the beginning of 2016.

I have had to use a few throwbacks and birthdays as cop outs,

but for the most part (and especially recently), I’ve been pretty good at taking a new picture every day. But pretty much every day, I get another person asking me why I’m doing this.

So here’s why:

1. I started over J-Term as a way to basically force me to get out of the house and be social. Miami’s break is crazy long compared to other colleges and I really just needed an excuse or motivation to do stuff. And, as dumb as it sounds, it worked. Motivation comes in weird ways sometimes so I just roll with it. 

2. I know a lot of people who have done this before (shoutout to Zach–the first person I saw do it back in 2014) and I think it’d be really cool to be able to look back on what I did each day at the end of the year.

3. It makes me take pictures. I have a love-hate relationship with pictures because I have a love-hate relationship with myself, period. I basically developed a reflex of running from cameras and constantly designating myself as the “photographer” for group pictures, but that turned very quickly into running away from social opportunities and allowing myself to be left out of a lot of could-be memories. And it’s weird that a photo-a-day challenge is the thing that motivates me to hang out with people and jump in front of a camera, but, again, I’m not questioning where the motivation comes from as long as the results are positive.

4. Social media is fun. I like being able to update my instagram account every day and I like it when people come up to me and tell me they’ve been following my “project”–which is something I didn’t even expect to happen. But it’s weird how many comments and compliments I’ve gotten from people about my pictures–and even my Snapchat stories too! (I have a newfound passion for snapchat.) And I understand how social media can be dangerous and can be seen as just another chance for people to allow themselves to be validated by numbers or whatever, but I don’t care about the likes or the “feedback” or whatever anymore (which is something I’m embarrassed to say I ever even cared about.) It’s just a lot cooler when people come up to me in person and say that they loved a picture or a snap story made them laugh or they feel “honored” to be in today’s Instagram. That’s the part that makes me feel good.

5. This. I read this forever ago and it still stuck with me as one of the coolest things ever. And I don’t know if this project will last more than 366 days or if I’ll even want it to (people tend to get sick of it by the time the project is up), but for now, I like that I’m finding the beauty in every day.

I like that I’m telling friends to come in for a selfie or allowing them to take pictures of just me.

I like this project, and I think I’ll just stop when I don’t like it anymore.

Sincerely,

Sammy

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I’M AN ADULT NOW {WEEK 12}

Dear Reader,

Every time I sit down to write my week in review, something goes wrong–and it always seems to happen with the pictures. Either wordpress malfunctions and won’t let me upload them, or my phone won’t send them to my computer via iMessage or, most recently, my email account won’t open on my web browser. Then, I’ll try troubleshooting for about five minutes before giving up and telling myself I’ll go back to it later, but I’ll forget and then sometimes a week goes by and I haven’t written a thing.

So, I’m just going to give a few highlights from the past two weeks, and I’ll edit the post later to add all the snap chats and random pictures that’ll add a bit of clarification to this mess.(Keep in mind that I write all of these with the pictures sitting next to me, so a lot of this doesn’t make much sense quite yet. Oops).

First, I finally went to Beat the Clock with some friends:

And Green Beer Day happened, but I look gross in all the pictures, so enjoy this shot of my friend drinking from a wine glass that was bigger than her head:

I FaceTimed Sarah a lot while waiting to FINALLY see her again:

And then I went to her show choir competition where they placed 3rd overall and Sarah got the award of best female dance of everyone!

Oh and Pi Day happened and my tweet got 3 retweets and 14 favorites which was pretty cool (s/o to Jaden for noticing and sending me this screenshot):

And sometimes I take pics like this to let Sarah know that I know she was my sister first and will always be the realest (I’m wearing a Phi Mu hat but her sweatshirt–kind of hard to see):

And of course we were reunited this week:

So we had to send some snaps to my brother

who is obviously sad he’s missing out on our sibling bonding

OH AND IN OTHER NEWS: I’m an adult. When I was a sophomore, I lost a baby tooth, and I thought that was the end of it. But nope, this is the end.

My tooth broke off a bit in my mouth maybe a week ago and I went in on Monday to get a filling, but my dentist noticed that this was, in fact, my last baby tooth. (They had a good chuckle when I told them that I’m 18).

So, the nurse goes, “no filling?” and he turns to me and, in his booming voice, exclaims, “I’m not fixing this! I’m gonna numb you up and pull that sucker out!” Such a sensitive one, that one.

But no picture. Because that’s gross.

So that’s what’s been happening in my life. Hope everyone else is somewhere sunnier and warmer than where I am (it’s snowing right now).

Sincerely,

Sammy

PS. Do yourself a favor and listen to the entire Hozier album if you haven’t done so already–Jackie and Wilson and Like Real People Do and Someone New are my current favorites (because it’s so hard to choose just one).