Disclaimer: The title has little to do with the content :/
I finally signed up for an Instagram account, after years of resolution not to expand my plethora of social media accounts beyond Facebook and Twitter.
Well, around the time when Friendster was still a thing, I also swore to myself not to use Yahoo! Messenger. Of course, you bet on it, I did come to use the chat software. I said to myself, again, ‘At least, I’ll stick to Friendster and not even touch Facebook.’
Before I knew it, I had been proficient in Facebook and also managed a Twitter account, although I don’t even remember the last time I tweeted something. Easy come, easy go.
Anyway, I downloaded the Instagram app and followed only a number of photography accounts.
Photography has recently fascinated me to the point of me seriously considering grabbing some cash and buying myself a decent camera and starting on a trip somewhere strange just to take pictures of random things.
Again, here I contradicted my past self. The past, pretentious me always thought that photography was one of the least artistic form of arts. First, photographers don’t create things the ways, say, a painter or a sculptor brought works of arts from something blank and something virtually shapeless.
The objects of photography, even if natural, existed prior to the click of the shutter. Perhaps, I thought, that’s why photographers ‘capture’ moments or ‘take’ pictures.
Moreover, utilizing a device as mechanically sophisticated as a camera seems to render photography more of a technical ability rather than an art. Technical ability is the last thing you would want to describe an art as. If an art were about to do things according to the rule and to precisely follow instructions, everyone would be a chef simply by following recipes.
While I’m at it, I have always believed that cooking, though extremely commonplace, is actually the highest form of art. It encompasses the very basic of human needs, which is nourishment by eating and drinking, and transforms it into a meticulous process with endlessly creative end results. If you’re lucky enough, you may happen to pick a episode of MasterChef and watch only that episode your entire life and even then, still find something you’d never think of putting into your mouth, like cockroaches. (Either that, or you somehow get to the right - or wrong - alley in a random Asian city.)
Back to the Instagram thing, Facebook, the owner of Instagram, must somehow have sent notifications to my Facebook friends who are also registered Instagram users that I was new to it. I gained a number of followers, most of whom I am friends with on Facebook.
Not that I mind being followed (I’d probably be a bit proud of myself too), but I just don’t want to follow them either, since doing so will spoil my initial intention of signing up to this social network (which is by its name ironic, since I don’t wish for any social interactions on a social network). On the other hand, not to follow them back may seem a bit rude here where I live. Well, I just hope my friends either don’t notice that I don’t reciprocally follow their accounts or read this that they can understand my reason.
I did follow back a small number of real-life friends whom I consider important in one way or another. I follow present buddies or colleagues (because some friends turned strangers at some points and remain as such). I also follow a few people in my life I’ve had an affinity with.
The latter category excludes the one person I have a crush on, rather counter-intuitively. To see her, though only on picture, on a daily basis no longer feels as pleasant. After spending some time together and knowing more about each other, I discovered that we may not be as compatible as I would like it, and so an inherent desire of detachment naturally arises.
Worse yet, it recently dawned on me that with most people, I can only establish one kind of relationship or go with the flow of its evolution. I can never be casual with my boss, and I don’t normally let my colleagues take a stance of superiority over me. If someone does a thing or two I deem despicable, no matter how amiable I have been towards him or her in the past, chances are I will look down on him or her. With my fellow tenants and old friends from school, I try to keep the conversation topics of work away, because the relationships we have developed, at least in my view, are ones free from the professional and financial responsibilities the world of work is full with.
Concerning my feeling towards this particular woman I have a crush on, since I got broken-hearted, naturally I tried to do away with any romantic feelings I have had for her. And when they started to peel off, there’s no turning back to the happiness I would always be immersed in when seeing her.
But I believe that one day these things will be far enough in the past that they no longer hurt. Although, then, they will also refrain from being a source of bliss.
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