Yesterday the amazing ladies of The Rising Tide Society started a week long Instagram challenge for it’s members. If you don’t know what The Rising Tide Society is all about, you need to check it out! We’re proud members of this community of encouraging creatives and business owners. Our chapter, the Southern Maryland group, meets every second Tuesday of the month and after just 3 meet ups we’ve met so many wonderful creative entrepreneurs! The first day of this week long Instagram challenge, asked us to post a photo of our Monday cup of coffee to start off the week right, and rally behind one another on this sometimes busy and hectic start to the week. #MyMondayMugShot became a trending hashtag almost instantly! Pouring over these photos was so much fun! We were inspired by so many that we saw, and it was great to see a huge number of people like us out there, working hard to make their dreams happen. Now don’t get us wrong, we love a good Instagram photo with great light, clean backgrounds and just the right details to style the whole thing. Usually we’re wearing our Photographer’s hats, trying to get the perfect shot even on our iPhones. But seeing so many photos of unique coffee cups, pretty day planners, clean and styled computer desks, and polished nails had us feeling a little nervous. Our life wasn’t looking so pretty yesterday morning. Not that anything was wrong with our mornings, they just weren’t so darn pretty and they were far from perfect or stylish. Getting our own morning mug snapshot to look perfectly awesome was going to take some work, and some lies. So we thought about how we could make our Instagram feed look like everyone else’s.
We cleared off an end table, wiped away the dust (because we don’t dust unless it’s Christmas), then we opened the blinds and moved the table closer to the window light. Next, we had to find pretty things nearby to add to this “quick shot”. What story could we tell? What do we want to make it look like we’re up to this Monday? Got it… we’re “getting ready for the day.” That’s a good one! We started with the half full mug of coffee, with just the right amount of cream creating the perfect caramel color against the rim of the mug. Next, we added the pretty, brand appropriate necklace we’re “about to put on”. A flower must be included because, flowers are always pretty. What else? Ooooh makeup! Fashion blogger style! A blush brush and an eye lash curler we had to dig up out of an old makeup bag made their way to the pretty yellow table top. Then we spent 7 full minutes rearranging how these items were placed on the table for the best look. Snaped 100 different versions of the same thing, just to choose one. Then edited it in some awesome app with just enough pizazz but not too much. NEVER over edit your Instagram photos. Not cool.
This is what we came up with and this was going to be our #MyMondayMugShot
The only problem is… it’s complete crap. It’s totally fake, and a big ‘ole lie. This is NOT what our morning looked like. Here’s a run down of why:
1. We were not both in the same place. Maggie was at her house, Betty was at the studio. Neither of us were actually here in this spot doing any of this.
2. Betty doesn’t drink coffee.
3. Maggie doesn’t put makeup on before 3pm.
4. Neither of us know where that flower came from.
So, after texting each other back and forth all morning (which is what we do, constantly) we decided to scrap it. Start over, and just take a picture of what we’re really doing. Forego the need to be perfect, let go of the pressure to be pretty, and just embrace our real life. Quickly, we posted these two photos to our Instagram feed, and we each posted our own. Yes, we were in two different places, so there needed to be two different monday morning photos. This business is made up of two people. The two of us are in two different places a lot of the time, doing two very different kinds of equally important work. The 30 minutes it took for that first photo to be created, and the texting back and forth deciding how to create it, was a complete waste of our time and energy. In those 30 minutes, 6 emails could have been answered, a wedding day timeline could have been drafted, or a welcome gift could have been packaged and ready for the mail. Sometimes there’s a little too much value placed on the glamor of this “creative entrepreneur” lifestyle. It’s amazing, we love it, and we will never want to do anything else with our professional lives, but let’s get real… no one and no morning is ever perfect. Life is beautiful, but it isn’t always pretty, and striving for perfection is a waste of time. Our Instagram feed will not always be perfectly styled, because our lives are not perfectly styled. We decided to be genuine, and not just use the word “genuine” but really be genuine and totally honest.
So here’s what happened instead…
Maggie took her phone, held it above the kitchen table she was sitting at with the baby in the other hand and Sweet Cheeks sitting next to her. A new cup of coffee had been freshly poured, this time black. She took two sips the entire morning, and it had gotten cold anyway. As she answered emails and posted to the blog from her phone, this is what was going on around her…
Glamorous huh?
And at the very same time, Betty snapped this shot of what she was up to. At the desk, pounding away at the boring stuff most people don’t like to do. Running this business and keeping track of the day to day, sticky notes, tracking receipts, spread sheets and all…
Don’t you just LOVE a color coded calendar?! How fancy and creative!
This got us thinking, maybe it’s time we did a real “Day In The Life” challenge for ourselves. Get totally real, and remain completely unedited. Put our brave face on and reveal what the day to day is really like for us? Yes. That is what we’ll do!
All day Wednesday, August 19th, we’re going to be Instagraming a “live feed” (so to speak) of our day to day lives. We’ll take turns posting, because we will be in two different places for most of the day. Maggie will post, Betty will post, and you’ll get to see how unique and normal, fun and boring, rough and polished our real lives can be!
Make sure you follow us on Instagram to follow along! And be ready for a Day In The Life on Instagram with Birds of a Feather Photography!
As you see posts come into our feed, look for one of these two hashtags to find out which one of us is posting!
Join us!!
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