If you give a girl an Instagram: an adaptation of Numeroff's greatest work

In college, I was an active Facebook user and I dabbled on Twitter whenever I was bored and in front of a computer. I knew to make Twitter really "happen," I needed a smart phone.  Enter my post-college android.  Although I thought I was only missing 3G, Twitter never took off for me, and instead, I became hopelessly and laughably addicted to Instagram.  Snap a picture of what I cooked for dinner, hashtag 25 different things with some combination of "vegan" or "veggie" in it, and wa-la: my social media satisfaction for the day!

Family, pals, and acquaintances snickered at me and my hashtag friends, but I WAS UNASHAMED.  I still am.  It's been a fun Insta-run, and while it's far from over, I have no problem saying that I'm ready for more.  It comes as no surprise that I can't be as expressive as I want on Instagram.  Sometimes, I'd like to share a recipe and not just a few of the main ingredients I used.  Oh, and the back stories.  There are instances when I think, "this is kind of quirky and I want to tell people why or how I made this."  Then there are the things I don't take pictures of; things I want to put words to, but that I rarely do.  These run the gamut from concrete to abstract:  the soft-spoken woman I befriended at the liquor store who hates apples and loves apple sauce, the recent designation (but not dominion) of four spaces around my neighborhood as "my own," and countless thoughts on straddling that line between growing up and never getting old.  If I hadn't started my Instagram, I would've never thought to begin a blog and never thought that I would have the recipes, random musings, and photos to fill the space.  About one year after joining Instagram, here I am, blog clearly in tow, and ideas... somewhere.

I hope you find clarity and patterns as I unravel my own small world on tinajoan.  If you don't, at least you have the promise of accessible, plant-based recipes. If I don't find any sort of personal understanding here, oh well, I can always revert back to what I know: #vegan #vegansofig #whatveganseat #vega...

Like Laura Joffe Numeroff's well-known children's story, the lesson here is all about the snowball effect. If you give a girl an Instagram, soon she will want a blog, a domain, and, a few years down the line, an invitation to Vida Vegan Con.  At this point, whether Numeroff intended to portray the snowball effect in a positive or negative light is pretty irrelevant.  Because now I'm thinking about momentum, opportunities, movement, propulsion, and impulse. Not a single one of these things sounds bad to me. And neither does a cookie.