#80: The instant gratification of being an Instagram artist

And why I want to step away from the never-ending content churn

On a particularly gloomy winter evening in 2017, I made a choice that would change my life forever. 

I uploaded a snapshot of my sketchbook to the Instagram account I’d created just moments before. This post would be the first of many in a year-long challenge to share a comic every day. 

Sweet, baby 23-year-old Haley!

I truly didn’t expect an audience to grow, but it did—from ten people to hundreds to thousands.  

That year came and went, but I didn’t stop sharing my work. This coming January, it’ll be eight years of identifying as an “Instagram artist.” A lot has changed in that time. The app itself has gone through countless makeovers and algorithm updates. 

And I’m moving through my own changes, too.

Maturity increasing exponentially from left to right, thank god.

But one thing has stayed the same: I love the instant gratification that comes with posting my work to an audience.

I’m not sure my relationship with that immediate validation is healthy, though.

And let’s be real: Churning out artwork every day is not feasible, at least not for me. The content machine is always hungry for more, and it’s gotten to a point that I can’t feed it.

I think this might be one of the reasons I experienced such intense burnout after writing my first book. Balancing that mammoth of a project with regular Instagram posts felt exhausting. A lot of this was fueled by my concern that no one would care about my book or my work if I stopped showing up on their feeds, that they’d forget about me entirely.

So I put my mental health on the back burner and soldiered on.

I’m not ambidextrous, so this is especially tough.

I saw author Haley Jakobson speak a few months ago during her paperback book tour. She mentioned something about the importance of patience in a creative career. Her words stuck with me.

Though it doesn’t feel wholly natural yet, I’m trying to practice patience. I want to sit with my art or my writing before releasing it online (if ever). 

Even still, I hate that this feels hard, that posting on social media feels like the final step in my creative practice. 

But like any other muscle, I’m going to keep practicing.

Is this something anyone else has been struggling with? I would love more conversation about the humans existing behind the posts and how it feels to keep up with the online rat race. 

Thanks as always for reading, for validating, for making me feel seen. Hugs to all of you!