10 YEARS — NO STRINGS

I finally caved and decided to jump on the ten year Instagram trend bandwagon.

Giving into social media trends ain’t really a thang to me. If it’s something I like, I’ll do it despite how cliché or wack it might be. I personally loved seeing how much my friends have glowed up over the last ten years, especially because I’ve only known a lot of y’all for a year or two. And wow. We all had some rly interesting phases, huh? You still cute tho.

The whole point was to see how much you’ve changed - at least I think it was. In the last 10 years, I’ve had just about every hair length in the book, I’ve been pink, blue, purple, and even blonde, and my style’s gone from scene to punk to who knows what the fuck to where I am now. I was positive my photos from 2009 would be god awful, and while a lot of them are, I noticed an eerie similarity to some photos I took just a few months ago. The similarities are really uncanny.

I had so many thoughts when I finally put the photos side by side. First, wow what the fuck. Two, DOES THIS MEAN I’M BORING? Three, whew. I felt relieved because I’m constantly writing about the whirlwind that was 2016-2017. About how I’ve changed so drastically. And I have! I’ve grown so much since adulthood, and I’ve DEFINITELY changed a lot over the last 10 years as anyone would/should. But sometimes I worry that maybe I’ve lost myself. Or maybe I’ve changed too much. I look back and there are some things I just can’t believe. Almost 10 years ago, I started what would become a five-year, mostly-long-distance relationship and I had an innocent, lovestruck softness to me. I had box-dyed brown hair that was 10 times curlier and took 3 hours to straighten. I was extremely out of touch with my culture - both black & Pakistani. I dressed weird. I listened to a lot of Blink 182 and Panic! At the Disco. Weird, unbelievable times.

But while I was digging thru my Photobucket (YES, I still have my Photobucket), I saw countless graphics and layout images I designed for MySpace. I saw little photo shoots I’d do with my friends. And I felt the same energy and creativity that I put into projects today. Projects like No Strings. And it actually made me really happy.

Take a look at the gallery below to see what I’m talking about. Shit’s wild.