Are you a fan of Instagram? Do you feel like the energy you use there is well-spent?

I’m reminded of that old mom warning, “Don’t scarf your food so fast that you can’t even taste it!” Yeah, I’m reading through Love Your Enemies by Arthur C. Brooks pretty quickly, but does it really apply to books? I don’t think so.

It’s just that I’m loving it so much, it feels so good to get all these nourishing ideas, I have to gobble them up as fast as I can! Like I said before, it feels like an antidote to the poison I’ve been witnessing. I want to take a giant swig and pass that baby around to as many as will take it.

Like this quote, for instance, “It’s regular citizens acting as leaders who matter most in the battle against the culture of contempt.

By declaring our independence from the bitterness washing over our nation, each of us can strike a small blow for greater national harmony and become happier in the process.”

I feel like my neighbors and I have been doing that in a small way every week at our potlucks, but this book is inspiring me to do more. It’s hard though, especially on social media where I encounter most of the vitriol. I’m not a thick-skinned person and the past several years have made me angry at most of the world and far too prone to react to provocation, looking like a fool and creating more unhappiness. But the reason I’m really enjoying this book is that he isn’t simply inspiring me with the “why,” he’s giving me a good dose of “how” to go with it.

Speaking of social media…do you have Instagram? I’ve been on and off there and Facebook a lot over the last couple years, much to the dismay of some of my friends. What can I say? I’m learning as I go here. Sometimes you have to let of something to see if you need it or not.

In the past, I’ve used Instagram to post quotes from the books I’m reading along with quick riffs about what I’m learning. My hope was to generate interest for the blog, but it doesn’t seem to do that. I rarely get crossover clicks. Instagram is built more for images than words, and I’m more of a words person, speaking to words people. This past month, I let it go again and discovered something.

I like making the graphics of quotes from my reading. It helps me solidify the part I read that day and I remember more about the book. Besides that, it makes a nice reminder of where I’ve been. The bonus is every once in a while, I connect with another human. I’ve decided to bring it back.

Each hour I read, I go back and select a quote that stands out to me. I create a graphic, post it to Instagram and then write a sentence or two about it. Sometimes I use that quote in a blog post because there is more that I want to say about it. For a while there, when I was posting regularly there, you could tell how many hours I spent in a book by how many posts there were about it.

I hope you’ll join me. I love Instagram for a number of reasons. First of which is that I get to meet new people there. Facebook, I reserve for friends and family I’ve met in person. You can follow my public posts there, and I’d love it if you did, but Instagram is where I share more of what I’m doing here. Instagram is where the beautiful strangers are.

The second reason, and don’t laugh, is that I’ve found the most amazing mental and relationship health helps. I follow some wonderful therapists that post the best helps for free. People like Self Work Co and The Love Therapist have changed my life, not to mention all the Bookstagrammers that have added to my TBR shelf!

If you’re interested, I’m DesertDreamer72. I’d love to connect with you there and see all the fun things you share with the world.