…that is the question. And it’s been haunting me for a number of months. If you follow my account you would have noticed that several months have gone by since I was last writing regularly. I haven’t stopped with my artwork or creativity. I just had a period of social media burnout. I felt suffocated at times, so I took a break. Now I'm back but I need to be clear about how this will work...
Seven long months...
I've actually been away much longer than I intended. Initially, I just felt I needed to take a short break to reassess stuff (things were getting a bit chaotic). Then, the more I thought about stuff, the less sense it made to come back to it all.
Most of my social media stuff is related to my artwork - to get it out there so I can try to make a living (still working on that bit). So it was quite important to me in that respect. I also love social media as much as most of you, but I started to notice a number of things creeping in that I had to put a stop to or, at least, to control...
The tail wagging the dog
As the saying goes, I noticed that the tail was wagging the dog. In other words, my social media was starting to control my artwork (instead of me using social media to display my artwork and get it out there). I found that I was drifting away from art that I wanted to do and into doing art that got the right sort of responses online. I know that one should pay attention to the stuff that sells, but not at the expense of turning your own work into something it's not meant to be.
Self worth pinned to a post
I also noticed that I was beginning to value my work based on the meager responses that I kept getting online - in other words, I felt my efforts and skill were not good enough simply because I wasn't getting the responses that I felt I should be getting (based on the effort I put in). I know, of course, that a lot of responses are based on networking and algorithms, and even on what time of day one posts stuff - but that doesn't help ones self-worth when a painting that took you 30 hours gets 5 likes and a comment, while you see others getting hundreds of responses. I had to get away from this toxic thinking - it was doing me no favours. It was actually making me want to paint less.
Procrastinating away the quality
I also found it comforting to be writing posts and pinning pics, instead of doing actual work - sometimes it's easier. But of course, the more one resorts to that sort of reasoning, and the more one posts, the poorer the content becomes. I felt that sometimes I was just posting stuff for the sake of it (or because I hadn't reached my 3 post a week target! - self inflicted arbitrary targets are always the worst reason to post anything). And the social media sites add up (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Steemit, Discord, Patreon etc etc.) - I can lose a couple of days in my week just on writing content and editing pics, instead of my actual painting and photography - so if the quality of my output was worsening it was like a double hit.
Take a deep breath...
It feels good to be posting again to be honest, after such a long pause, but from now on I will be more conscious of the negative effects that these things can bring. That may mean I post less stuff, maybe not even weekly. It may also mean I disappear for a while, every now and then. But I don't see these things as bad, as long as it helps the quality of my output improve...
I will see you all again, the next time I feel I have something interesting to put down in here.
Stay creative xx
Adam