Q & A | Part I
My DARLING BOOKSHELF Q&A
PART ONE
Excuse my Southern, but y’all, I can literally sit for hours listening to people vlog/blog/podcast question and answers (please tell me that I am not the only one) — I think they are so much fun and such a good way to get to know someone that I may never actually get to meet in person.
That being said, I decided to round up a lot of the questions that I receive the most often on Instagram and share them here as one of my first blog posts. Because of the length of some of my answers, I split the blog posts into part one and part two. In Part One, I am sharing my answers to personal questions and bookish related questions. In Part Two, I am sharing a lot of my favorites (products, movies, etc).
Who or what inspires you?
I find so much inspiration from my relationships — with my friends, my family, my boyfriend. I also love spending a lot of time alone with my thoughts.
If I am feeling particularly uninspired, I love scrolling Tumblr/Pinterest, taking a walk in nature, and journaling.
2. What made you want to start a Bookstagram?
This is going to be a very long-winded story because there really is no other way to detail my desire to start a bookstagram and my love for reading without going back to the very beginning.
Since I was very young, I have always been an avid reader since but I distanced myself from my passion for reading when I was an undergraduate and then law student (there isn’t really time to read for enjoyment when you are cramming hundreds of pages into a day just for class the next day). After I dropped out of law school (a story for another time), I spent a few months nannying a sweet little girl in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where I had a lot of alone time with my thoughts. I spent much of this time figuring out what I wanted from my life and more importantly determining my identity without law school in the picture.
I started journaling, a lot, and got back to the basics of what I actually enjoyed doing. I found that the same love I had at the age of six, still remained. I love(d) writing, I love(d) reading, and I love(d) being able to flex my creative muscles. So I started doing more and more of both.
When I moved back to Charlotte and started working at a marketing agency in uptown, I realized that I was going insane with the lack of creativity in my life — I was craving some type of outlet but had no clue where to start. Right around this same time (December 2018), I stumbled across an Instagram page that was all about — you guessed it — books.
I spent the rest of the week going down the wormhole that is bookstagram and after a lot going back and forth with my fear, I eventually created my own in February 2019.
And that, folks, is history.
3. Where do you get inspiration for your Instagram stories?
I honestly am very picky about my aesthetic to the point where my boyfriend will sometime tease me for how long it takes me to edit/upload an Instagram story, but I can’t help it! I am an Enneagram 4 so I spend a lot of my time curating my space and my stories. How things look impact how I feel in an extraordinary way.
I get a lot of inspiration from my friends — most of whom are the most creative people I have ever known. I also follow a lot of fellow creatives and people that I admire on my bookstagram and personal account that are constantly inspiring me and pushing me to new levels of creativity. I take inspiration wherever I find it and through trial/error, I make it uniquely my own.
4. What camera and lens do you use?
All of my Instagram pictures prior to October 2019 were all taken on my iPhone. I still take a lot of my pictures with my iPhone (primarily for my stories) but for images that I want to be higher quality, I work with my good friend and photographer Natalie who has all of the fancy camera equipment! I will let her jump in and give you all the details on what she works with.
I also want to add that if you don’t have access to a camera, my biggest tip for taking a beautiful picture with your iPhone is to make sure you are shooting with natural light.
See HERE for my post on how I create and edit my pictures for Instagram.
5. What is your biggest dream?
My biggest dream is to be an author and a mother.
