Back in November I deleted Instagram from my phone.

It was a snap decision. To take a break from social media and blogging until the new year. I’d been getting more and more uncomfortable on Instagram. Frustrated with it. The idea of taking time and space for me sounded pretty good.

To be clear, I wasn’t feeling uncomfortable with my blog or with my beginnings of a YouTube channel, but I figured it would be good to unplug completely*. And so I did.

The first thing I noticed was that checking Instagram was ingrained.

Every time I picked up my phone I’d automatically start to stretch my finger towards where the app used to be. I was surprised and a bit embarrassed. I’m not addicted. Well, maybe I was.

Some history

I’ve been using Instagram for a long time. The first photo in my feed is from December 27, 2011. It’s a photo of Charlie and Jude.

We’d just adopted them on December 5th of that year and the photo library on my computer as well as my Instagram feed from that time is made up almost entirely of photos of them.

I didn’t really know what Instagram was back then. I didn’t use it as social media. I used it for its photo filters**.

I posted photos of the dogs.

I posted photos of food. Of hearts. Plants/flowers/gardens. Paintings. Crochet & sewing. Random things that caught my attention. And when summer rolled around LOTS and LOTS of roses (oh how I miss my old garden and all its roses).

The first time one of my photos got a “like” was May 1, 2012, after I’d been using Instagram for 5 months.

I’m not sure exactly when I started following people, but it was probably around then. In July of 2013 one of my photos got a whopping 18 likes. In October of 2014 I got a record-breaking (for me at the time) 65 likes.

Growth was slow. And it wasn’t the point. Sure I enjoyed getting new likes and followers, but I don’t think that was my goal.

At least not at first.

Had it become my goal? At one point it had. This week I discovered a notebook from 2015 where I kept track of my Instagram followers, but I stopped counting that November. From April to November my followers grew from 526 to 1,214. I don’t see any notes mentioning why I stopped, but I think it was because I felt I’d been spending too much time with it.

Likes and followers. Aren’t numbers the only way to measure success? Wasn’t that what everyone was striving for? Wasn’t that what every webinar and online course that promises to teach you how to achieve Instagram “success” was showing you how to do? Didn’t we all have to play the game of beating the algorithm?

I learned, over time, what photos would most likely be unpopular, but then there were always surprises. Photos of paintings I loved sometimes got very few likes and there were also photos that got unexpectedly high likes. Even so, I began to curate what a shared and from time to time went through and deleted anything unpopular (or “off brand”***).

It all seemed so silly once I sat down to think about it.

I’ve heard so many different rules about Instagram: post at least 3 times a day but no more than 5, post at a certain time of day, make sure you have a photo of yourself at least once every 9 photos, make sure all of your photos look the same, vary the look of your photos, be sure to spend at least 20 minutes interacting with the app after posting a photo, use a lot of hashtags, don’t use a lot of hashtags, use the same hashtags all the time, don’t use the same hashtags all the time, don’t post photos of food unless you’re a food blogger, have multiple accounts if you post different types of photos…

I wonder why I bothered to read any of the advice.

Back when I was beginning to use Instagram, blogging was still big. Lots of people left comments on my blog and I read (and commented on) lots of blogs, too.

Blogging was a community of creativity. It provided inspiration and connection.

From then until now, that has slowly changed. I can’t even begin to count how many blogs I used to love that are now gone. My friend Dana started blogging again last year after stopping a few years earlier, but she’s not sure if she’ll keep going. Recently she said “Blogging’s never going to be what it was”. Carolyn (who lives near me, but whom I’ve never met in person) shared her frustrations about blogging with me recently, too.

I don’t know if social media has caused the shift in blogging, or if it’s been driven in part by the pressure to monetize blogs. “Experts” (perhaps some of the same people who promise to share the secrets to Instagram success) stress the need for “useful” blog content, but while chatting with Carolyn over email I realized that those sorts of blog posts aren’t the ones I like to read. As for writing those sorts of posts, Carolyn said that took the fun out of blogging and left her feeling like she was giving away too much for free without any sort of return.

I’ve written about blogging again and again (on my old blog, too) and maybe the topic, apart from Instagram, deserves its own post.

As for the shift from blogging to Instagram, I have continued to blog throughout, but I also slowly began to use Instagram for connection and community, too. Early on, many of the people I followed on Instagram I knew first from blogging. Eventually many of them quit blogging in favor of Instagram. Then over the years on Instagram I’ve “met” so many interesting and inspiring people from all over the world. I used Instagram, in part, to discover artists for my Artist Interview series and for Sketchbook Conversations.

And so what is most meaningful on Instagram? Numbers of likes and followers? Or the connections we make there?

Today

Coming back from my break I’ve thought a lot about social media and how (and why) I use it. I’ve chatted through email, in comments on my Instagram posts and direct messages on Instagram about feelings surrounding social media. A lot of people are feeling uncomfortable.

Research abounds that shows the detrimental effects of social media (just google “instagram negative effects” to see what I mean). And many of the articles claim that Instagram is the worst social media for your mental health.

I frequently see posts on Instagram where people share these feelings (I went back to look for one and the person had deleted it. Oh we do feel insecure about sharing these feelings, don’t we?!?).

But not everyone feels this way. My friend Jaime (an artist I “met” through blogging way back when) even said “I can’t imagine going back into a world where there wasn’t social media.” Judith said “I barely know you in regular life, but I do feel connected to you from your posts. To me it’s the inspiration and unknown possibilities that make me stay with it. Especially when we live in the same town.”

Other people mentioned how Instagram has taken blogging’s place for inspiration and creative community.

But also I think back to what Grace Bonnie said in her Creative Mornings talk about how real life matters more than our online ones.

So, what’s the answer?

I think it all comes down to intention.

Those of us who are using Instagram (or any other platform) for ourselves or for our businesses**** need to do so intentionally. We need a purpose for using the platform. For the photos we post and for the time we spend. I think some of the negativity comes when we mindlessly open Instagram and scroll through the photos. Or when we feel pressure that we must post something even if we don’t have anything to say (or feel pressure to “grow” our numbers of followers or our “likes”).

I think some of the negative feelings (at least for small, creative businesses) come when we try to force our posts to fit the advice we’re all hearing. Meda, an artist with whom I connected over Instagram, said “the moment I start thinking of using it to promote myself, to follow certain marketing rules I hear people talk about, it gets yucky.”

So many of us also feel negativity when we start to compare ourselves (or our lives or our art or our businesses) to others, whether we admit it (or are conscious of it) or not. Tamara says when she starts to edge into comparison, and “get overwhelmed with the sheer amount of sharing” she knows it’s time to take a step back, to take a break.

Knowing when to take a break, honoring our feelings, being honest with ourselves is so important. It’s part of being authentic.

And authenticity, in addition to intention, is key.

Authenticity is a bit of a buzzword, isn’t it?***** But I think it’s important. If I follow someone else’s formula for my art or my business or the way I use Instagram, then I’m not being authentic. If I’m not being authentic, then of course I’ll begin to feel uncomfortable. And if I’m following someone else’s formula, how can I be successful as me?

But there’s also a fine line to authenticity. I’m not usually going to include the messy side of my studio in a photo I post.

And I rarely share photos of my cats or dogs anymore, either.

I don’t usually share failed paintings or my rough sketchbook pages. In my Sketchbook Conversations interview with Abigail Halpin she admitted to the fact that her sketchbooks are full of mistakes and that she doesn’t share those pages online for professional reasons. And yet Sara mentioned that “In general, and thinking of the creative process in particular, I wish I saw more of the ‘failed’ or growth process/progress as a learning/teaching opportunity.”

It’s a good criticism of this imaginary perfection being curated and shared online.

Of course, what we share and how we share it has to be personal. Each of us has to choose our own way to go.

Alisa Burke regularly shares her thoughts honestly and openly on her blog, on social media and in her classes. She often talks about the importance of following your own path. In a recent blog post she said “I did (and still do) ALL the things that business experts tell you NOT TO DO & it worked!”

This sort of advice isn’t something I hear very often. It’s refreshing. And it’s hopeful.

So, where do I go from here?

A number of people mentioned they didn’t want me to stop sharing on Instagram. Don’t worry, right now I’m not planning on it.

Other people have told me they hope I don’t stop blogging. Don’t worry about that, either, I’m not planning on stopping anytime soon.

My break from blogging and from social media has helped me to realize what is most important to me in both: connection and inspiration.

Dana is probably right that blogging isn’t ever going to be what it once was, but there are plenty of people who still blog and still share posts that aren’t created to any “experts’” specifications. Remembering that helps me to re-commit to what I’m trying to do here.

And to what I’m trying to do on social media, too.

If nothing else, thinking about these things helps me reset. It gives me a chance to start over with a fresh perspective and a renewed sense of purpose. I’ve even come up with a list of my own personal “rules” for Instagram:

• Only post when I have something to say

• Post what I want to post, not what anyone else says I “should” post

• Don’t get caught up in numbers

• Be intentional about whom I follow

• Be mindful about time I spend

• Make meaningful connections — invite honest conversation and engage in honest conversation

• Remember to have fun

I think the only way we can change how social media affects us is to change how (and why) we use it.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, too. Are you on Instagram? Do you enjoy it? What are your intentions for using it or other social media? Do you have your own set of personal “rules”?

*or almost completely. I was still online for checking email, sending my newsletters and running my business. I also didn’t unplug from Pinterest where I love to collect recipe ideas and sewing inspiration (among other things).

**Much in the same way I used Hipstamatic. But Instagram gave me more control, allowing me to alter my photos after taking them.

***This makes me a bit sad. That these photos don’t share my whole story, but then again, none ever do. And if I want to look back at a fuller picture, the photo library on my computer has… well, lots, lots, lots more than my Instagram feed does.

****Although I use Instagram for my art business, I do not have a business account because to do so requires a Facebook account. A few years ago I deleted my Facebook account and don’t ever plan on going back. Facebook owning Instagram is part of what makes me uncomfortable about the platform, but for now, even though I cringe every time I see “from Facebook” at the bottom of the screen, I’m sticking with it.

*****There’s even a book titled Hashtag Authentic (named after the podcast) all about Instagram.