Say Hello, Wave Goodbye

Or how I reassessed my social feeds, rediscovered the interior inspiration, ditched the talking cat videos, took control and found the Save button again. And also, my mojo.

Bonjour, mes amis. A few weeks ago, I went to Lyon on a press trip and ever since, I have found myself slipping into French for no apparent reason. I even said merci beaucoup to someone who moved out of the way for me on the train last week. I don’t know why this is. Is it because it is just sounds so much more appealing than our own language? Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. My French is shockingly basic, a fact of which I am always ashamed. I never know why it is that we expect everyone to be able to speak English yet we don’t cram Dualingo for months to be fluent for a holiday to the Dordogne. It’s terribly entitled, really.

One of the greatest regrets of my Hong Kong childhood was completely zoning out during four years of Cantonese language lessons, failing miserably with the only redeeming fact being that I can still count to ten when required. I am also well equipped with a plethora of deeply offensive regional sayings that remain embedded in my brain, despite an inability to recall any day to day language phrases whatsoever. Should you ever need to tell someone to go and have intercourse with a close relative in Cantonese, I am your woman.

Anyway, I returned from Lyon on a cloud of inspiration. I’d visited the Ligne Roset factory (I’ve mentioned before that I am a big fan of a factory tour) but also the family home of the founder of the brand, Jean Roset, a 70’s space of utter dreams which has been kept exactly as it was left when he died back in 1999. As someone who has been interiors obsessed forever, walking around this architect designed building almost brought me to actual tears of joy. To see such iconic design close up; to see reflections of how we decorate today within the rooms, to marvel at the innovative bravery of the ideas, to feel and to touch them, to see his extensive art collection close up. It was, for me, the most privileged of experiences and one that had me returning home fully inspired.

The deeply inspiring home of the late Jean Roset.

I’ve been posting my home on Instagram since 2015, almost ten years now. When I first discovered a group of similarly interior loving people on there, it was like a door had opened. For years I’d cut out pictures from magazines and filed them away; I’d scoured charity shops and boot sales for treasure, I’d lugged mid century sideboards and boxes of vintage glassware through fields of mud and displayed them with joy in our home. Outside my children’s bedrooms was a full wall of painted doe eyed 70’s children with massive heads fishing in their nighties (these, in fairness, terrified them). I was a rare lover of vintage interiors in the town in which we lived, but a very passionate one.

Instagram enabled me to find others who also loved doing the same but not only that, it brought to me accounts (mostly in the USA at this time) who thrift sourced, decorated and shared what they loved online. The States had plenty of big online magazines and blogs - Apartment Therapy, Domino, Design Sponge, A Beautiful Mess, SF Girl By Bay - that were not altogether driven by traditional interior design and which encouraged independent and individual decor and ideas. Here in the UK, we were far more prescriptive in this area but Instagram bashed down those boundaries, gave people confidence to try new things and made bloody good inroads into democratising design as we knew it. My scrolling gave me life; I engaged with what I saw and posted inspiring rooms from my Saved folder every Saturday on my feed. Good, good times.

Beata Heuman via AD.

After returning from my Lyon trip raring to go, it suddenly hit me that some time ago, I had stopped saving inspiring pictures. In fact, I had lost the joy of the scroll. My Explore feed was immersed in talking cat videos, stories of extreme weight loss, family memes, fluffy sofa cover beds for dogs and worst of all, POV Reels (these drive me CRAZY, mostly because 99% of POV Reels are not ACTUALLY points of view at all). There was no glorious interior content there to inspire me, although if I was looking for a Schitts Creek meme then I was well equipped.

But worst of all, even when I scrolled my Home feed, it was ALSO full of POV Reels, plus endless five second trending video content that turned my already numbed brain to mush (TikTok has SO much to answer for). This plethora of cat fuelled carnage was not what I was here for. I had followed accounts randomly and aimlessly; I’d stopped ‘managing’ what I saw and left it to the fate of the unholy bastard that is the Instagram algorithm and as such, had lost both my previously beautiful Home feed and my inspirational mojo. Something had to be done.

I was, at this time, following around 1800 people. A quick glance at my followed list showed me that I not only did I not engage with the majority of them, nor see their posts, but that many of them had no relevance to me whatsoever. Someone else’s wedding guests, people met on holiday ten years ago and had never spoken to again, random meme accounts, polar opposite to my style interior accounts - it was a list rife with anomalies. BUT - and this is the important part - these accounts were stopping my feed from showing me the inspiration that I craved.

Heavenly inspo via Merit LA.

So, my friends, I took control and culled. Starting with the ‘Accounts You Least Interact With’ tab, I ripped through them like a bullet and was, admittedly, ruthless as hell. If I wasn’t inspired, didn’t know them (a significant amount I had literally no idea how I came to follow them) and I didn’t engage or feel an affinity with their content, it was job done. In one fail swoop, I ditched over 800 and announced it to my WhatsApp group, much to the absolute horror of my friend.

Friend: ‘I could never do this’.

Me: ‘But wait. You follow almost 4.5k people - how many of these do you you find inspiring, have an affinity with style wise, or even seen on your feed or engaged with recently? Or even remember why you followed them?

Friend: ‘But if I unfollow them, THEY MIGHT NOTICE. They might be upset that I’ve unfollowed them’.

Me: FFS.

But I stoically cast aside the risk of offence (and there is a risk - I bumped into someone I hadn’t seen on my feed for forever and who had appeared on the Least Interacted list at an event last week and was forced to tell them that I had unfollowed, for this reason. Yes, awks, but also, fine) and continued on my mission to relight my inspirational fire. Over the next week or so, I culled whenever I had a spare moment. The more I culled, the easier it became and before I knew it, I was down to 750. And that, people, is when the magic happened.

Image via Picnic For Lunch.

I started seeing accounts that I hadn’t seen for literally YEARS. My scrolling Home feed was transformed into almost all static content; glorious pictures of beautiful rooms and lovely, lovely things. The small businesses that I had known for years but which had been restricted by the algorithm popped back up (and my bank balance went down accordingly). Every single post that now appears on my Home feed scroll is one that I am inspired by, whether that be an interior design shot, a delicious looking recipe Reel, a fashion edit, a beautiful tablescape, a fabulous artist or a carousel of paint colours. I started saving and resharing inspirational pictures on my Stories and had DM’s shouting about how much people enjoyed them. My inspiration came BACK, and with it, my Instagram mojo. And, of course, the more I scroll and engage with these posts, the more that they appear. Everyone’s a winner, baby.

Spurred on by my success, I moved on to the smug shores of Facebook. Admittedly, I am not a fan of Facebook and I also don’t think that it’s really a fan of me. Sometimes Instagram does this thing where it copies all my posts over to my Facebook personal feed and I only realise it two days later when I open it to find that the Like quantity is a barren desert (post a photo of the cat on the bed or a child starting a new school year and they’re ALL over it, though). It wasn’t hard to cull (a significant amount I couldn’t even recall how I knew them to start with and four of them were actually no longer with us) and I was quite ruthless. In fairness, my Friend list was already quite small, diminished in previous culls some years ago due to Brexit, non ironic ‘Live Laugh Love’ posts and views on the Covid vaccine, so it didn’t take long, but I still managed to narrow it down quite significantly.

Seashells, Natalie Savage.

As an aside, the first batch to feel the wroth of the cull were a group of school friends. As I get older, I realise that even though I may have known people in years past, I don’t actually know them now. We are not the same at 16 as we are at 53. Everyone has different lives and different views and if the friendship is strong, then this can be overcome but if it’s not, then there’s no reason to push it. I’d put a lot of emotional importance on these historic relationships without even realising it. So this month, I decided to, in the words of Elsa, let it go. After a distinct lack of invites to communal events which were then joyously shared on Facebook alongside prosecco clinking selfies, I started to feel as if I were back at school left standing in a corner and it didn’t make me feel good. In fact, it made me feel really bad about myself. So I unfriended the lot of them. And immediately felt MUCH better.

Anyway, I digress. Time, friends, is short and I want what I see and what I read to make me feel inspired - truly, madly, deeply inspired. One of the very best rewards that I have reaped writing here on Substack is that I am surrounded by other writers, readers and creators who ALSO want these things. My Notes feed is a selection of interesting paragraphs, shared visual media and links to articles and there is a kindness about the platform that is often lacking on others. It’s the best combination of discussion, news, light hearted convo and great photography. Perfect. Plus, there are no POV posts on the Substack watch, that’s for sure.

Glorious tablescaping by Maximilian Hurd.

And thanks to Jean Roset and his bucket list dream of a home, my 750 following Instagram feed is now a veritable inspiration of joy to behold (although in an ideal world I’d kick it down to 500 but, you know, slowly but surely) and there are no ‘It’s Always Time For Wine’ posts on my Facebook scrolls. I am back in the inspiration game and am VERY happy about it - as with all in life, we need to concentrate on what makes us happy and focus on it. Social media is a huge part of our lives and what we see can impact our mood, the way that we feel. Curate the social feeds that bring it to you and ditch the ones that don’t. It’s really easy just to get stuck in a rut of constant social channel dross scrolling; although it doesn’t necessarily make us feel bad, the fact is that often, it doesn’t actually make us feel anything AT ALL. Go for the feels.

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