Tasker - Hashtag authentic: finding creativity and building a community on Instagram and beyond

HASHTAG AUTHENTIC

Finding creativity and building a community on Instagram and beyond

SARA TASKER
@me_and_orla

By the conventional rulebook, I should never have found success. Small, socially awkward and devoid of any real self-belief, I made none of the life choices that could facilitate my dreams coming true. I thought I might make a good photographer, but didnt dare choose to study it at university. I love to write and considered journalism, but there was no way I could move to London to await a break that would probably never arrive.

Instead I built a quiet, simple life for myself and squashed those dreams down into hobbies that never asked me to try. I told myself all the bigger dreams were for other types of people: those from wealthier families, with better health, mindsets and opportunities. And then Instagram changed my world.

That sounds ridiculous, I know to give so much credit to a free app we all have on our phones. And yet it is utterly true: starting my account, beginning to take photos and share tiny fragments of my thoughts was the catalyst to everything unfolding for me; the tightly scrunched paper ball of my life being spread out and opened, full of uncharted territory like a long-forgotten map.

I was on maternity leave from my National Health Service job, learning the ropes of being a mother and feeling utterly, hopelessly lost. I hated being in our inner-city home, looking out onto concrete and other peoples walls. I missed my job, my patients, my sense of usefulness. I missed my identity outside of this new role of motherhood that, like my post-partum wardrobe, just didnt seem to fit how Id imagined. I sat at home under a sleeping newborn and wondered how I would tell her about all the talents and skills that Id secretly possessed, but never thought to put to use.

Trapped in this bubble, whole days fuzzing by, I turned to my phone for some solace and company. And thats when I discovered Instagram.

Here was a place where my creativity could exist. Here was a space where I could connect with others other parents and mothers, yes but also makers and writers and artists and coaches. It was a place where I could reclaim a wider sense of identity; where I could put all my years of nerdy Internet sharing and connecting on forums to a next-generation use. It felt like a place where I could be entirely and safely myself; something I had never and still havent, if Im honest managed to fully discover in the realm of real life.

I called my account Me & Orla myself and my daughter because in those long stretches of empty daytime, thats all that it felt like there was. I began to share the small, inconsequential moments of my days the ripe pears on the windowsill, the way the sunlight streamed through the curtains in the afternoon, the slice of cake I walked two miles with her to eat. Too tired to lug around my old DSLR, I decided to shoot a photo each day using only my iPhone, and so began my long-term love affair with those incidental phone cameras we carry with us wherever we go. I set myself a challenge on 1 January that year: I would try to post daily and find 1,000 followers by the end of the year. Within a month Id exceeded that target, and by April Id been featured by Instagram and was approaching my first 40k.

From there things continued to bloom: a bigger audience, a well-read blog, lucrative influencer work, press coverage, new friends, trips away and exciting events.

I was able to quit my job and move my little family out to the countryside, to a house that was home, where the windows look out onto green hills and sky. And I found my real passion the thing that got my heart pumping fast: talking about the how of it all. Sharing with anyone who wanted to listen what I knew and had learned about photography, social media, Instagram and beyond. How to use it, as I had, to build something more, in this digital landscape that didnt follow the old rules.

I began to mentor, and then to teach online courses and classes about social media. Gradually that grew into the multiple six-figure business that employs both me and my husband today, with enough time and space for spontaneous summer picnics with Orla, or a what the hell road trip when my schedule allows.

My free podcast, which shares its name with this book, has allowed me to connect with thousands of other like-minded souls, and my speaking engagements have taken me on more far-flung adventures than my old self had amassed in her whole thirty years.

Ive appeared in my favourite magazines Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Stylist and more chatted on BBC Radio and in what I think we can all agree is the ultimate achievement in life exchanged a string of DMs with my teenage celebrity crush.

But most significantly of all, Im living my life as myself. Seen and heard, messy parts and all and learning the kind of valuable lessons that I hope will help my daughter escape all the traps that Id put myself in.

Tuning into my creativity and finding a community that sees the world like I do has been transformational. And when I stopped to look back and took in all it had made possible, I really only had one question that I couldnt find an answer to. Why did nobody tell me this was possible? My hope is that this book will tell you what nobody has before. That its possible, entirely doable, for you, right now, exactly as you are. Not you ten pounds skinnier, or you in another degrees time. Whatever you have, whatever has brought you to this point, its really all that you need to begin to follow your heart.

People will tell you its silly. There will be folk in your life who simply wont understand. Thats ok; it doesnt matter. Do it anyway, and trust that your right people including me will be cheering you on.

The Internet is a huge, diverse and colourful place. Dive in, share your world, and come see what is waiting for you.

STORYTELLING

My Grandad took pictures. Hundreds of them, each one a tiny rectangular labour of love. Light metered, settings carefully chosen, he would capture the moment and wind on the film; walk down to the camera shop days or weeks later to get them developed, and then write on the back in his perfect, sloping hand, the place, occasion, and date.

Both he and my Grandma are gone now, but these pictures remain. I found so many as we cleared out their home an entire treasure-trove of forgotten memories and love. Pictures of them smiling at familiar Venice landmarks. My Grandad, a heartbreaking twenty-year-old soldier with dreamboat hair, perched on the hot steps of the Pyramids in Egypt. Me and my siblings with toys, with friends, with Christmas trees, with missing teeth. In school uniform, in tears, in homemade Halloween masks.