Yes! I believe I touched on this with you in AZ. Social media, for me, turned into something that didn’t feel good for my soul. I had no desire to produce content, just to create experiences through words. Even deeper, when companies would reach out, they wanted to create sound bites when I wanted deep connection. This platform feels like it encourages the intentional pace - reading the captions. Reading for the sake of reading. Thank you for inviting me into your experience 🌻
Thank you, Crystal. Yes, we did touch on this in AZ. I love how you honor your desire for deep connection. One of the creative tendencies I learned from social media was to shorten everything into a sound bite, a caption, something easily reshared. Which, over time, shortens all of our attentions spans, right? I'm hoping to unlearn this by deepening my writing practice here. I see you're doing the same. I look forward to following your journey. <3
It is beautiful to see you model a conscious approach to social media in a time when there is pressure to be in all places. Grateful to connect with you in a slow, intentional space, and look forward reading about how the spaciousness makes room for more of who you want to be.
Hillarie! Yes, grateful to connect with you too. I'm looking forward to exploring these new ways of building relationships in digital spaces. Our touchpoint from this week has given me hope! <3
I'm an artist who's afraid of Instagram. There, I said it.
Every morning I sit down and write three handwritten pages of whatever comes to mind (called morning pages, for those familiar with Julie Cameron's "the Artist's Way"). I've wandered through old memories, turned over difficult questions, written a lot of garbage, and generally poured out my very self into those pages. It taught me to love writing.
I've had instagram sitting on my phone for months, using it every day but hiding, not writing, in that space. It's like the moment I open up a word document or an instagram caption, all the joy of writing drains away, something inside of me shuts down and I forget what I had to say. I don't know if it's relentless comparison, or the pressure to say just the right thing in the most profound way, or my core lie that no one cares if I add to the mix of voices. My growing obsession is in the intersection of creativity and faith, and I'm in divinity school right now studying it. I feel drawn to share what I'm learning in my spaces as an artist and as a student -- but instagram continues to taunt me.
As an artist approaching Christmas, I think the gift in this for me might be just the opposite approach. Certainly I have taken breaks before (and will take more!) that have been very life giving... but right now I feel that an Instagram break for me would mean running away from it further -- not conquering fear, but feeding it. I love, love your comments here about not putting all our creative eggs in one platform's basket. Instagram does not own my sharing; I do. Perhaps something like a SubStack would be a better outlet for me to voice my longer thoughts in a lower pressure way.
You inspire me so much, Bethaney! Thank you again for sharing your courage with us.
Katie, I paused when I read your words: "...all the joy of writing drains away." Ahhh, such honesty. I've felt it. But I also hear you saying that not writing and not sharing on Instagram might be an expression of fear. I've been there too, having pushed myself to write and share on Instagram out of a desire to prove (at least to myself) that I have what it takes to show up even when afraid.
I wonder alongside you if Substack could be a good or better fit. While I honor and resonate with the desire to push yourself to show up creatively in the world, I also felt it in my bones when you said, "...something inside of me shuts down and I forget what I have to say." I'm curious if there are vehicles for sharing your writing that might create spaciousness and wonder in you, instead of dread.
You know, as soon as I finished writing that yesterday, I made a substack! 😂 And I feel totally relaxed and excited about it. I also got on Instagram and told the people about it before it even had a name yet. I'll use this space now to share some writings and resources that I've collected during my time in divinity school, but with zero pressure for a certain frequency or success rate. And who knows? Maybe as I get used to this lower pressure environment I'll feel the joy come back to Instagram as well.
Either way Bethaney I feel like the Lord has used you several times now to stir more thoughtful courage in me, and for that I am so so grateful! Thank you for your beautiful work :)
Woooo! So proud of you. I'm going to follow along for sure. You inspire me and I can't wait to read what you've been thinking about. Also, I *almost* went to Duke Divinity back in the day, so I'm pumped to live vicariously through you via Substack. 😆
This is such a lovely offering as always! Social media has impacted me in many ways. The good, the exciting, the connecting, and the all consuming information overload and even disappointment.
Lately, LinkedIn has felt like the only space that made any sense. In terms of the purpose being almost exclusively professional. It helps me gain access to thought leaders in my desired fields and build international connections.
This is a bit of an allegory for me in that social media works best for me when it is giving me new ideas and real world connections. I’m new to Instagram and really have no idea how I prefer to interact with it.
Due to the requirement of social media for the business offerings being designed, the intention is to contract out the social media presence work and content to someone working to break into digital marketing. So, all the accounts are set up but mostly blank so far until it’s ready for someone else to build a portfolio. 😊
Hi Keely! Yeah, LinkedIn is its own animal! Haha. And I agree, it's as though the clarity of purpose makes it less draining. When I've expressed my social media fatigue to mentors in the past, they also recommended that I consider hiring someone else to manage it. Which totally makes sense if one has the financial capacity to do that. But even still, I imagine that having clarity of purpose is vital to empowering another person to run any digital presence. My hope is that when I get back on Instagram, I'll have a bit more clarity about that. But my fear, I guess, is losing followers and support if my emerging purpose there doesn't align with why they started following me in the first place. And then, there's of course the even greater likelihood that the vast majority of my "followers" will never even see my content because the algorithm makes it damn near impossible to actually connect with the folks who've consented to be in my digital community. Bah! So much.
I love what you said about how social media works best when it's giving new ideas and real world connections. Absolutely!
I can only imagine the gifts you continue to share in your approach to content, meaning, and values and purpose driven living will continue to resonate!
It’s so lovely to see someone be this incredible bridge between so many important links in the connectedness of place, land, spirit, and society. Hopefully I’m not poorly interpreting!
I definitely don’t want to be prescriptive about getting social media support! It’s also really vulnerable and not simple at all to imagine that for the concepts I’m working with. It’s just how I’m trying to reckon with my personal challenges with all of it and have a beacon of hope it could be something more sustainable.
You are waaay ahead of me on content/Instagram, so it’s also my learning curve. 😊
I look forward to seeing/hearing what you learn as you dive more deeply into Instagram, especially the ways it compares and contrasts to LinkedIn.
And thank you, thank you for reading and engaging with my work. It means more than you know. Isn't it so wild that we met in Asheville all those years ago?! The irony of how social media has reconnected us is not lost on me haha!
Yes! I believe I touched on this with you in AZ. Social media, for me, turned into something that didn’t feel good for my soul. I had no desire to produce content, just to create experiences through words. Even deeper, when companies would reach out, they wanted to create sound bites when I wanted deep connection. This platform feels like it encourages the intentional pace - reading the captions. Reading for the sake of reading. Thank you for inviting me into your experience 🌻
Thank you, Crystal. Yes, we did touch on this in AZ. I love how you honor your desire for deep connection. One of the creative tendencies I learned from social media was to shorten everything into a sound bite, a caption, something easily reshared. Which, over time, shortens all of our attentions spans, right? I'm hoping to unlearn this by deepening my writing practice here. I see you're doing the same. I look forward to following your journey. <3
It is beautiful to see you model a conscious approach to social media in a time when there is pressure to be in all places. Grateful to connect with you in a slow, intentional space, and look forward reading about how the spaciousness makes room for more of who you want to be.
Hillarie! Yes, grateful to connect with you too. I'm looking forward to exploring these new ways of building relationships in digital spaces. Our touchpoint from this week has given me hope! <3
I'm an artist who's afraid of Instagram. There, I said it.
Every morning I sit down and write three handwritten pages of whatever comes to mind (called morning pages, for those familiar with Julie Cameron's "the Artist's Way"). I've wandered through old memories, turned over difficult questions, written a lot of garbage, and generally poured out my very self into those pages. It taught me to love writing.
I've had instagram sitting on my phone for months, using it every day but hiding, not writing, in that space. It's like the moment I open up a word document or an instagram caption, all the joy of writing drains away, something inside of me shuts down and I forget what I had to say. I don't know if it's relentless comparison, or the pressure to say just the right thing in the most profound way, or my core lie that no one cares if I add to the mix of voices. My growing obsession is in the intersection of creativity and faith, and I'm in divinity school right now studying it. I feel drawn to share what I'm learning in my spaces as an artist and as a student -- but instagram continues to taunt me.
As an artist approaching Christmas, I think the gift in this for me might be just the opposite approach. Certainly I have taken breaks before (and will take more!) that have been very life giving... but right now I feel that an Instagram break for me would mean running away from it further -- not conquering fear, but feeding it. I love, love your comments here about not putting all our creative eggs in one platform's basket. Instagram does not own my sharing; I do. Perhaps something like a SubStack would be a better outlet for me to voice my longer thoughts in a lower pressure way.
You inspire me so much, Bethaney! Thank you again for sharing your courage with us.
Katie, I paused when I read your words: "...all the joy of writing drains away." Ahhh, such honesty. I've felt it. But I also hear you saying that not writing and not sharing on Instagram might be an expression of fear. I've been there too, having pushed myself to write and share on Instagram out of a desire to prove (at least to myself) that I have what it takes to show up even when afraid.
I wonder alongside you if Substack could be a good or better fit. While I honor and resonate with the desire to push yourself to show up creatively in the world, I also felt it in my bones when you said, "...something inside of me shuts down and I forget what I have to say." I'm curious if there are vehicles for sharing your writing that might create spaciousness and wonder in you, instead of dread.
You know, as soon as I finished writing that yesterday, I made a substack! 😂 And I feel totally relaxed and excited about it. I also got on Instagram and told the people about it before it even had a name yet. I'll use this space now to share some writings and resources that I've collected during my time in divinity school, but with zero pressure for a certain frequency or success rate. And who knows? Maybe as I get used to this lower pressure environment I'll feel the joy come back to Instagram as well.
Either way Bethaney I feel like the Lord has used you several times now to stir more thoughtful courage in me, and for that I am so so grateful! Thank you for your beautiful work :)
Woooo! So proud of you. I'm going to follow along for sure. You inspire me and I can't wait to read what you've been thinking about. Also, I *almost* went to Duke Divinity back in the day, so I'm pumped to live vicariously through you via Substack. 😆
This is such a lovely offering as always! Social media has impacted me in many ways. The good, the exciting, the connecting, and the all consuming information overload and even disappointment.
Lately, LinkedIn has felt like the only space that made any sense. In terms of the purpose being almost exclusively professional. It helps me gain access to thought leaders in my desired fields and build international connections.
This is a bit of an allegory for me in that social media works best for me when it is giving me new ideas and real world connections. I’m new to Instagram and really have no idea how I prefer to interact with it.
Due to the requirement of social media for the business offerings being designed, the intention is to contract out the social media presence work and content to someone working to break into digital marketing. So, all the accounts are set up but mostly blank so far until it’s ready for someone else to build a portfolio. 😊
Hi Keely! Yeah, LinkedIn is its own animal! Haha. And I agree, it's as though the clarity of purpose makes it less draining. When I've expressed my social media fatigue to mentors in the past, they also recommended that I consider hiring someone else to manage it. Which totally makes sense if one has the financial capacity to do that. But even still, I imagine that having clarity of purpose is vital to empowering another person to run any digital presence. My hope is that when I get back on Instagram, I'll have a bit more clarity about that. But my fear, I guess, is losing followers and support if my emerging purpose there doesn't align with why they started following me in the first place. And then, there's of course the even greater likelihood that the vast majority of my "followers" will never even see my content because the algorithm makes it damn near impossible to actually connect with the folks who've consented to be in my digital community. Bah! So much.
I love what you said about how social media works best when it's giving new ideas and real world connections. Absolutely!
I can only imagine the gifts you continue to share in your approach to content, meaning, and values and purpose driven living will continue to resonate!
It’s so lovely to see someone be this incredible bridge between so many important links in the connectedness of place, land, spirit, and society. Hopefully I’m not poorly interpreting!
I definitely don’t want to be prescriptive about getting social media support! It’s also really vulnerable and not simple at all to imagine that for the concepts I’m working with. It’s just how I’m trying to reckon with my personal challenges with all of it and have a beacon of hope it could be something more sustainable.
You are waaay ahead of me on content/Instagram, so it’s also my learning curve. 😊
I look forward to seeing/hearing what you learn as you dive more deeply into Instagram, especially the ways it compares and contrasts to LinkedIn.
And thank you, thank you for reading and engaging with my work. It means more than you know. Isn't it so wild that we met in Asheville all those years ago?! The irony of how social media has reconnected us is not lost on me haha!
It IS wild! That’s the benefit of online where you get to follow the success of others and learn from and with them. 😊
As always, I enjoyed and appreciated your musings, Bethaney! I can’t help but want to put you in touch with Ashlee Gadd, specifically this post of hers: https://open.substack.com/pub/ashleegadd/p/we-deleted-instagram-for-31-days?r=43tzf&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Kaitlin, thank you, thank you. I'm hopping over to read Ashlee's post now.