thanks for making me feel old instagram

I finally put instagram on my phone today. Until now, I shit you not, I have been wondering how so many of my friends either afford fancy cameras or have massive amounts of time to spend photoshopping their photos into uber-hip, grainy, forcibly candid masterpieces. People without babies- this is what I think of you: I think you spend all of your time sitting at home photoshopping pictures you and your girlfriends took in the bathroom mirror of Blitz. Does photoshop even exist anymore? Is photoshop the atari of digital photo editing? Now that I know what instagram is, and that it’s appropriately named for its instantaneous nature, I wonder what the hell babyless people are filling their time with if it’s not photoshop.

I’m straining to remember what I did before I was pregnant. Ouch. Okay, here it is, let me create the visual for you…
Me, poured over my couch. Still in work clothes, one 5 inch totally impractical heel by the door, the other kicked across the room, remote in hand. Gaze fixed on the kitchen, attempting to teleport the bottle of wine from the counter to the coffee table. A thought enters my mind “Thank God I don’t have kids…I don’t have the energy to microwave a burrito, let alone keep a small human alive.” Somehow I muster the energy to respond to 3 text messages (because I actually had friends then) “can’t go out tonight, broke and tired. wine instead.” Then, 4 hours of VH1 smut, at least a bottle of wine, and sleep. End scene. Throw in a wild all-nighter a couple times a week, a day or two dedicated to personal maintenance - tan, nails, hair, maybe exercise and wa-la! Life without kids. 

I assume this is how every person without a baby is spending their life. And you disgust me. Because I look back and am disgusted. Why wasn’t I on Rosetta Stone learning French!? Teaching myself to play the sitar? Why wasn’t I backpacking in Guatemala? Why wasn’t I dragon boat racing?? I had so much free time, I had so much disposable income, I had nothing to lose, and I had no idea. I no longer have time to sleep, to drink bottles of wine, to engage in multiple social media platforms… I’m hardly managing to cut my toenails on a regular basis. Now when I learn an individual is child-free my auto response is an urgent and guttural yell “GO TO VEGAS! WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!?”

I love my baby very much, and even if I’d embraced a more fulfilling lifestyle pre-baby, next to motherhood, anything else seems as vacuous as 5 hours a day photoshopping. This is my message to the kid-less…I hope I’m wrong about you, that you aren’t like I was, that you are carpe-dieming your heart out. But one day I hope you know the beautiful joy and despair of never sleeping 8 consecutive hours, and that you too taste the bittersweet serenity in no longer being cool enough to know what the fuck instagram is.