I try to not get sucked into social media: Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, Flickr… whatever else is out there with cute misspelled names. I have a love/hate/hate/hate relationship with Facebook, and I probably definitely give it much more space in my life than it deserves.

And Instagram? At first I couldn’t see any point in taking photos with a cell phone, formatting them into tiny little squares and then posting them to… exactly where was it they were posted to???

When I finally got a cell phone that had capabilities beyond conveying conversations,  however, I simply couldn’t resist the urge to document all the minutiae of my daily life. And of course once one goes to all that bother of snapping a photo, they need to share it with someone, right? Enter, Instagram.

I see it as my photo “junk drawer.” Junk drawers don’t really contain junk. They hold any number of useful things that just don’t have a designated spot to hang out. Sometimes I take photos that I simply find amusing or pretty or whatever, but don’t really want to share on Facebook for the whole world to see.

Today I thought I’d pull out a few items from my Instagram junk drawer to share with you, but don’t show them to the whole rest of the world like Facebook does, okay? Promise?

Instagrams seem to fall into certain categories. We have…

the oddities:

A gate held shut by chains and a padlock, but there’s no fence. Anyone see a security risk here?

A glove balloon in the shrubbery outside a hospital. Bored interns?

the beautiful:

Summer flowers, autumn leaves, winter snow, spring flower and leaf buds and melting snow…

The obligatory sunrise/sunset taken through power lines.

silly captions:

“I think I’m lost. Has anyone seen the ocean? Big… blue… wavy…”

Rare sighting today: the yellow-bellied sap maker.

pets: (silly captions optional)

I wanted to continue our walk today, but Chules just wanted to leaf.

adventures:

When you forget where you packed your utensils, you have to get creative.

and of course, Selfies!!!!

Taking selfies isn’t as easy as it looks, kitty.

Now I’ve shown you mine… What’s in your junk drawer?