Recently, I took a break from Instagram.
I have been posting my artwork and art process on Instagram regularly throughout the pandemic and it’s become a place where my intention is to create fun, positive, uplifting explorations into and through my creative practice. This has been a fun exploratory journey in learning how to frame my artwork in new contexts, and also in putting myself into the picture - something I was resistant to in the beginning. Also though, I often find myself thinking about instagram in terms of planning what content I want to create there, playing with photo setups and creating videos with my artwork. This can be fun and also - it becomes its own job and takes a lot of brain space not to mention the psychological impact of followers and likes. So many folks in creative fields are using instagram in fantastic, interesting ways. I find myself having complicated feelings about Instagram.
While I have a 15 minute timer on Instagram on my phone, I find myself sometimes getting sucked into an addictive and numbing feeling of endlessly scrolling through images, devouring them in seconds. I seem to be searching for something I feel like I’ll never find. This does not make me feel good.
Something that has helped me has been to consciously create more awareness around what sources of information I am feeding myself. I set an intention to protect myself by thinking about the quality and quantity of content that I’m digesting - (in images, sounds, music, videos, news, text, etc etc.) This has helped me to spend less time scrolling endlessly and focus on choosing 4 or 5 accounts that I really enjoy and feel uplifted by - and turning on the notifications for those.
We are living in an age of information and for an empathic person such as myself, I get overwhelmed by the incredible stream of thoughts, feelings, emotions, calls to action, rants, beautiful imagery, & on and on and on that are being uploaded by everyone, everywhere, 24/7.
So I took a break and it felt amazing, cleansing, and refreshing to not think about for a bit - to give my brain a rest.
If you feel complicated feelings over Instagram or any social media platform, here are some journal prompts to sort through your feelings:
What types of posts bring me joy, positivity, inspiration?
What is my intention in looking at content? Am I looking for creative inspiration? recipe ideas? fitness tips? Monday motivation? updates from friends? Are there ways I can implement some strategies to make it a more positive experience for myself?