Exactly one year ago . . .
This story is about what I got, what I learned, and what I do while and after quitting Instagram for a year.
I used Instagram start in 2015. I remember the first photo I uploaded is a sunset photo that I took on a train during my trip from Surabaya to Jakarta. After some photos that I posted, I begin to fill interested because I can share my trip, activity, feeling, opinion on every single photo that I posted. Gaining more followers make me feel more excited to post more photos. Beside it, I’m myself truly love photography.
But on January 15th, 2018, I decided to temporarily suspend my account. The only reason to suspend my account is I wanna try to live without it and want to see what happen to me. So, what I got after it?
More Educational Contents
Far before I quitting Instagram, I already install Medium on my phone. I read articles on Medium and I really enjoy it. Most of the articles that I read is very relevant to me because I can set my interest to make me easier to find more related content to me. I also set my own target to read two until three articles a day. Reading three articles a day educate me more than scrolling my Instagram timeline. I don’t say Instagram has no educational content, but it based on accounts that we followed. Some people also can argue that it was my mistake to follow accounts with less educational content, yes I admit it. But looking educational content on Medium is much easier than looking it on Instagram.
Not only reading, but I also start writing articles on Medium. My first article — posted on February 1st, 2018 — is a story about what I learned from being a competitive programmer. You can read it here . Anyway, it is written in Bahasa. I also begin to write tutorial articles about programming and software engineering based on what I learned from other articles. I also try to publish my articles on some publication like Easyread and Hackernoon . Thanks a lot for Iman Tumorang and Eminarti Sianturi that invite me as a writer on Easyread and encourage me to write more. Great thank also for Hackernoon that accept my proposal become your writer.
Publish articles on Medium is more boast that publishing a beautiful image on Instagram. Contributing to help other get educational content is boosted me to write more and more. Got claps and followed by people that I don’t even know is more appreciating than got followers and likes on Instagram. How will you feel when your articles are tweeted by accounts that have a lot of followers? For me, it is a great honor.
From writing and reading articles on Medium, I improve a lot my English skills. My vocabulary increasing day by day, especially in technical terms. For me, explaining technical stuff in English is very hard, but now it easier. I learned how to write good sentences in English and I learned a good way to deliver content — even though this article not good enough. My reading skill also increasing by the time. I can read faster than before. I also explore new things and deepen my knowledge for my next article content.
I also discuss with some fellow about the article that I write before publishing it. By discussing with other people that already use it on the real project give me more insights about what I currently write and learn. I can use other features form tech stack that we discussed to make the article better. I also start to build my network to people that have some passion with me.
During this one last, I also learn how to contribute to open source. Contributing to open source teach me how to make better code. A good code should be self-explained code, readable, and testable. Self-explained code means your code should not need others comment to explain the purpose of the code. I also learn how to create unit test to make sure my code not broken when others use it. And, once again thank to Iman Situmorang that approve me first ever pull request. I hope I can contribute more and more.
Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. ~ Albert Einstein
Once again, I’m not telling Instagram’s content is bad. I also not expect Instagram full of educational content, because it not the purpose of Instagram. And also, delivering educational content on Instagram is harder because the caption length is limited. We may also create educational content by images on Instagram, but I think it is limited too.
Let’s take the good part of each platform to improve our lives.
Cappy Hoding! 🖖🏾