I want to take my art seriously and share more consistently on social media. I have already had good feedback and know people are interested in what I make. However, I’ve been totally stuck with my insta account because I started sharing art on my personal account a few years ago, and a lot has changed since then. A friendship group I was part of ended and that’s a good thing for me but all of them are still on my account — they are from my hometown which is extremely interconnected and everyone is in everyone’s business. I distanced myself from it but my family are very involved and will see my old friends. I have had to move back here several times for various reasons which I find triggering, but the part that upsets me the most is that by having everyone from my hometown on my account I hold myself back from posting often. Partly it’s fear of judgement, but partly it’s also fear of maintaining access and an open door to people from my past. Each time I go to post I feel like I’m blasting myself into the past. I don’t want to start an account from scratch because that means losing my history and creative evolution on the account as well as connections formed through my art, but having hometown people on there is damaging my self esteem and self expression. Do I block them all and face the potential discomfort of that? Do I try to ignore their presence? Or do I just scrap everything I did and start again and post to an audience of no one until hopefully some people find me…..
This has been sitting in my inbox for a while and I feel like I can finally answer it. Long answer short: Remove them all from your account and show up exactly how you want to.
Long answer: Last year my long term relationship ended in a bad way and I lost an entire group of friends. They just completely stopped speaking to me, because in the very end it was my fault. No one unfollowed me, they watched all of my stories, liked nothing, and were essentially just monitoring spirits for the sake of entertainment and curiosity I guess. So after a month or so I made my account private and removed all of them and unfollowed them. I felt like I couldn't show up as myself with them just lurking, even if it wasn't malicious. I don't regret it one bit. And I don't live in a big city. Some of them work in the small town I live in and I see them, and they literally ignore my presence or run and hide from me lol I avoided going out in the city for practically the whole year because I didn't want to deal with the awkwardness and honestly just believed everyone hated me. I'm glad I took time to myself but being a coward is so boring, and no one really cares the way you think people do. I made my account public again earlier this year and have been writing on substack a lot and I don't care who looks. My goal is not to live small, have a little life where I'm making decisions based on comfort and awkwardness. You want to be an artist, so be an artist. Share your work, be vulnerable, get rid of the monitoring spirits and be in your own energy. It'll set you free. You could start all over if you want to, I've done it so many times, but I think if your account is working for you then stick to it and just start morphing it to the content you want to post. If people don't like it they can unfollow you and it isn't personal. And you'll gain people who want to follow you just for your art. I'm sure by now you've made your decision about it but this is my take. Good luck !
turnnoffyourmind
snowghoul
origamiaround
dailybridgerton
izzy806
