Instead of a wedding car, we took a black cab. Through the windows we watched the sun glint on the river, and spoke about normal things with our photographer, India. I said I’d packed eight rolls of film for the honeymoon we were taking two days later; that I intended to switch my phone off. As we rumbled across London, she told us she’d not posted her photos online for five weeks. “I’ve been able to live things a little more,” she explained. That seeing happened more closely when it wasn’t destined for someone else’s scroll.

I’ve chewed over these words ever since, mostly, I think, because I've been weaning myself off Instagram in fits and starts for the past year or two. Over Christmas, while on holiday, when everything generally feels “a bit much”, I tend to log out and delete the app. When it’s really bad, I get M to change the password. I honestly didn’t even miss it during those three weeks while I was on honeymoon. There were the weekend breaks after that. But gradually it crept back into my daily life.

During the heatwave I’d had enough: I was too climate anxious to see yet another blistered heat map of Europe. The algorithm was endlessly showing me videos from people I wasn’t following, my own engagement (the term given to how many people connect with your updates, and how) was tanking, along with more sense of worth I’d like to admit. I wrote about needing space, logged out, and deleted the app. For the first time, I didn’t know when I’d go back on.

For context, I use Instagram a lot: I post most days, I’ve made great friends and landed a fair bit of work through it. Coming off is not always a smooth thing to do - sometimes I’m contracted to post at certain times, or I have career stuff to share on there (some of you will have seen posts about this newsletter or my forthcoming book on there during my so-called “break”) - but it’s nearly always a needed one. I’ve got into the habit of deleting the app after I’ve posted.

That was in mid-July. Nine weeks, and a handful of those aforementioned posts later, and this is what I’ve learned.

An extra hour in the day

When I came off Twitter at the start of 2019, I found myself consistently finishing my work an hour an hour earlier. I put that down to not drifting to Twitter, scrolling, finding something that I’d open in a new tab and sometimes read. It’s happened with Instagram, too. In the first few weeks I was reading a couple of books a week - some in a weekend alone. Time is slippery and soon gets accommodated, but I have felt like I’ve been swimming around in more of it. Sometimes, this gets gobbled up by watching episodes of Indian Matchmaking on repeat, but I’ve also managed taken on noticeably more commissions over the past couple of months.

Reframed mornings

I would love to be a screen-free bedroom person, but I’m not. While I have a fairly strict airplane mode bedtime rule, I use my phone to check the time when I wake up, which means I tend to check other things, too. Instagram used to be among them. In its absence, I’ll still see what text messages and emails have come in overnight, but what’s telling is that I’ll then put my phone back down and pick up a book, head out into the garden or get on with my day. Mornings are my most productive time, but I’ve found my focus has been supercharged (or, perhaps, just restored to a time when my brain wasn’t addled by dopamine-induced notifications) since I’ve deleted the app.

A different space to think

As someone who writes articles about the stuff we consume in our lives (I tend to agree with Fran Lebowitz in being somewhat allergic to the word “lifestyle”), Instagram is a legitimately helpful resource. Trends bubble up there long before they hit the zeitgeist and it acts as a helpful bellwether of what people are looking to change in their lives. At times, I’ve felt like I might be missing something. But being without it has encouraged me to look at - and for - things more broadly. Yes, I’ve slunk onto Twitter a bit more, but also into my own brain and the conversations I’ve been both having and overhearing. I’ve been trying to look more actively at the life unfolding around me, rather than that appearing on a screen.

I miss my mates

I use and understand Instagram in two ways: what I call “peoplegram”, where my IRL pals hang out, and where I have a very ugly and scarcely updated feed of things I see on the street and funny-stupid stuff my husband does, and “instagram”, where @noughticulture lives. There are undeniably accounts I really care about on the latter, and what’s been interesting is wondering how the people who run those are getting up to while I’ve not been checking in. But it’s peoplegram I miss the most. I want to see your cat get a pastry-shaped cat toy stuck on her claw! I want to see your new baby! I want to see your lovely holiday, and your cute lover, and your GQ magazine cover story, and I want to leave a little emoji underneath. It’s funny how this has become the flotsam and jetsam of digital life - the miles you’ve run in the park, or the screengrab of the text your mum sent (yeah, we do that, soz parents), or the fact your morning sickness has kept you up for three days straight. I really miss it.

I’m not sure I miss the other stuff

Honestly? Life is just a bit nicer without the information overload. Typing that feels a bit like a person willingly retreating into a signal-free bothy on a remote island. There are not a lot of good headlines around at the moment - I don’t need to list them here, we’re all living them - and I’ve found it tricky to process social media’s offering in that context. The lines between distraction, blind ignorance, fiddling while Rome burns and mad shouting into the void seem increasingly blurred. I imagine this will change with some distance, but it’s been useful to have some space to think about it.

But I’m not leaving for good

Given all of the above, it would seem like I should just abandon the whole thing, right? While I didn’t know when I’d properly return to Instagram - in a kind of, hi these are stories of my garden, way - I always expected to come back eventually. I like posting things and sharing what I’m up to. I like seeing other people do the same. I like finding new ice cream spots or sustainable swimwear brands through the app; I like seeing what’s growing in people’s gardens. Frankly speaking, I have a book coming out in six months’ time, and I’m really lucky that there are people on Instagram who are willing to share my excitement about that.

Having time away has made me examine what I share, and why. It’s made me relish things for what they are, rather than what they might look like on a screen on somebody else’s feed. I’ve enjoyed dishing up a plate of pink pasta on a pale green bowl simply because it looks nice, or going to the seaside, for me and my mates rather than for the internet. At a time when I’ve felt really overwhelmed, it’s given me focus. I’m going to hold these things close, but I’m also going to open up again. I suppose we’re all just looking for a bit of balance, really. I think I may have found some.