I’m quitting instagram

Jan 20

I’ve been away for 2 months and I don’t miss it.

Something just snapped around Thanksgiving. I was planning a trip to Santa Fe and wanted to keep all the good details to myself. Usually I spend half my time (hyperbole? probably not💁🏼‍♀️) on vacation figuring out how to tell the story on social.

Then as a freelancer… there’s the pressure to always be present so you’re top of mind to potential clients.

Which means I have to keep producing work. And answering DMs. And replying to comments. And continually promoting my work. But then you have to do it at the right time… and there’s this mysterious ~algorithm~ that you have to appease. Which means taking lots of video content… which means spending more time filming myself working than actually working….

I’M ONE PERSON WITH LIMITED ENERGY OK.

I realized I was spending all of my limited creative energy creating content FOR instagram. For free! I don’t want to help the Zucker-robot build his weird meta empire. I would never agree to the amount of work I was doing for instagram with so little return if instagram were a client.

Not to mention… I don’t want to create art just for the sake of what will perform well on instagram. I don’t have unlimited brain-space for creativity. I find that I can only do illustration for a few hours a day. Sometimes not even that. I’m tired of wasting it on creating stuff just for the hit of a few likes.

bears dancing at night in the bob marshall wilderness

That’s not to say that instagram has been all terrible. I’ve linked up with some really cool clients and people through it. Big Gay Market would literally not exist because I met my co-founder digitally first.

I’m not deleting my account entirely. I know most people will continue to use it as their primary way of keeping in touch. I will be re-purposing things I create else where to share on social every now and then… but I don’t want it to be the primary way of finding me or my work. It’s too exhausting and the company (facebook.. meta… whatever it is..) doesn’t line up with my personal values.

The best way to contact me from now on is through direct email (see my contact form here), subscribing to my newsletter and following along here!

Warmest wishes,

Grayce