Leaving Instagram, and a newsletter about writing newsletters

It's okay if we outgrow the apps we've been using for years.

Two Sundays ago, I was feeling particularly unmoored with the kind of restlessness that drives indecisiveness about everything from what to eat for lunch to finding topics to write about. I shuffled around the apartment unable to make any decisions on what to write while Mark buzzed about in the kitchen, chopping, marinating, braising, and meal prepping four dinners for the week ahead. The contrast between our productivity levels was comical. And of course it made me feel even more terrible.

Was I experiencing seasonal depression? Was I feeling delayed anxiety by my lack of a post-career plan?

It’s probably all of these things. The graying season of winter isn’t helping and I’m uninspired and adrift. The laundry basket is full of clothes unfolded; plants need to be watered; words need to get written on a page.

A drawing of cherry blossoms for you. Spring IS coming and maybe that’ll break up my current case of the blahs.

The very messy process of writing newsletters

Someone recently asked me how I decide what topics to write about each week. I confessed that I totally wing it on Monday and sometimes find myself in a fetal position by Tuesday.

This is NOT an essay about how to write newsletters. I have no advice to give on how to ✨Streamline Your Process with Creative Efficiency to Fuel Productivity!!💥 Unless…staring at a mess of paragraphs full of non-linear streams of consciousness is its own kind of strategy. If I am anything, I am transparent, and I’m here to tell you that I’ve been struggling.

I’ve come to accept, at least for now, that the way these newsletters land in your inbox on Wednesday mornings is through a lot of flailing and fretting. The entire process is ugly. I write, I delete, I rearrange paragraphs, I walk away. Sometimes I panic and often times I start over.

There is a flow state to writing, but I haven’t achieved it yet this year. I’m not sure what’s going on with my brain,¹ but I haven’t been able to focus and stay on task lately. I know content calendars are helpful, but my lack of planning is by design, and that’s because I don’t want this newsletter to feel like a job.

Except that it kind of already has—and that is not a bad thing. I started this newsletter 15 months ago to create some sort of scaffolding around a routine when my job ended. You, readers, have given me a purpose that I didn’t believe I needed when I felt like my career was coming apart. I truly am not exaggerating when I say that I get tearful every time I get a notification for a paid subscriber (I’m hormonally menopausal, ok? I cry at everything). I really can’t express my gratitude enough.

I have this stupid orange checkmark next to my profile name now that indicates when a writer is a “bestseller” and it gives me anxiety. I’m just above the qualifying threshold of 100 paid subscribers (in case you were wondering) and I’ve never had any kind of verified badge before. It feels pretty weird. Even though I’ve been creating content on the internet for over 20 years now, I’ve never been paid for my writing.

When an experiment like this newsletter shifts into something more, things get interesting: more subscribers, more page views, more complexity that often comes along with growth. I’ve been there before with my old blog. But because of your generous support, I have now reached a living wage according to 20 states where the minimum wage is still $7.25 an hour (yes, I actually did do the rough calculations). Unexpectedly, it’s become a small stream of income that can actually pay a few bills.

It’s ok to quit things

You know what didn’t work out?
YouTube. Lol.

Last year was my year of trying new things and even though starting a YouTube channel was really a fluke, I was also curious to see just how difficult it is to reach YouTube’s threshold of monetization (1k subscribers plus 4k hours watched in 12 months, FYI).

Yeaaah, it’s difficult. Especially if you’re not chasing content designed to go viral. But who was I kidding? I’m no YouTuber and I hate being on camera. Curiosity aside, my main motivation was getting the hundreds of hours of video that I filmed during my trip to Korea and making something out of the footage rather than have it just sit on my phone. In that sense, it feels like a huge accomplishment. In the process, I learned that I really love video as a creative medium; it just takes a really long time to edit, and this cycle of shoot/edit/upload that’s required to be a successful YouTuber is fairly relentless.

So this is the year that I double down and decide where I want to focus my energy. What is actually still worth the investment in time? Much like my process of gradually shedding my designer identity, I’ve been peeling away layers of distraction and social media platforms one by one. Years ago I stopped posting on Facebook. Last year, I quit Twitter/X; a few months ago, Linkedin. And last week I decided I was done posting on Instagram.²

Instagram is like a toxic relationship

I’m aware that nobody needs another “Why I left Instagram” essay. We’re all familiar with algorithm woes and the struggles with time-sucking mindless scrolling of other people’s vacation photos and aspirational lifestyles that make you feel like a loser.

Last summer, I made another push and turned my dashboard back on to track stats. I learned that photos and stories are what reaches your followers, but reels is the only content that gets pushed to new ones—but only at 10% of your follower count. If your reel does well, and that is driven by the number of shares and saves, then it gets exposed to more users. This is how YouTube videos catch on to the recommendation wave as well.

So I made reels, which I rather enjoy creating, and I saw both exposure and engagement grow. However, this system that pushes you to post consistently in a niche topic and punishes if you don’t is the kind of abusive relationship behavior that I don’t need in my life. Nobody does, yet so many of us become tethered to this app.

It’s not even about the frustration of the algorithm for me. I think I just outgrew it. After more than a decade, something was bound to change—either me, IG, or both. If users are largely driving the content that’s trending and being pushed to the feed, then maybe I’ve outgrown what’s being shown in my feed because there are only so many reels and ads I can watch (even cats!).

As a creator, it’s not about the disappearing number of likes or followers that’s the most disappointing, it’s that we’ve been conditioned to scroll, like, scroll, and like without further engaging. It all feels empty and pointless.

I miss the conversations and the long chat threads. I actually like meeting new people and I wasn’t getting any of that on Instagram. And across multiple platforms, this fretting of what to post where, when, and how often was just getting silly.

One day last week, as I was wrestling with the tripod and the self timer on my camera to set up a shot while grumbling to myself how stupid this was and how I was too old for this shit, I suddenly put the camera down and yelled to myself, “You know you can just quit, you weirdo! Stop stressing over this!!”

Ohhhhh.
And that was that.

First Instagram posts circa early 2011 (remember those filters? 😂) and the last post in 2024—for now at least.

In my first few newsletters when I was just coming out of my full time job, I talked about this idea of taking back my time. I should have also included my online consumption. There is one term that I still use from my working days and that is ROI (return on investment). Editing videos which takes a massive amount of time to upload on YouTube wasn’t good ROI if I was never aspiring to be a monetized YouTuber. I’ll just make videos when I want and upload them whenever.

Creating content for Instagram isn’t good ROI for me either, especially since I’m not selling a service or product anymore. I also have no interesting in brand sponsorships or being any kind of influencer. Sure, I might pick up a few newsletter subscribers, but if my content isn’t being pushed to new people then I can argue that I’ve already exhausted any conversions. So, if I’m no longer getting any value in return, what am I even still doing there everyday?

Fourteen years later, after Instagram seemingly killed blogging when we first jumped on, I’ve come full circle and decided that this newsletter is where I want to be.³ This is where I want to post my photos and art.

2024 is starting to feel like the old days before social media. And I really didn’t see that one coming.

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Extra bonus drawing if you’ve reached this far

I told you brevity wasn’t my strong suit. I also told you I wasn’t going to be afraid to make some ugly art, and I trust you enough to share things that I don’t like. I mean this isn’t really bad, but it’s pretty meh. Ok, I hate it.

Continuing with my quick-ish charcoal studies.

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A few things that I enjoyed this week

I watched two shows worth mentioning:

• One Day (Netflix) if you want your heart torn out and a good cry.

• The new Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Prime) is a fun watch. But no one warned me about a certain cat scene later in the series so I’m warning you.

And I read some interesting things:

• I’m Finally Quitting Trying to Quit Social Media (Slate)
  Ok, maybe I did write another “why I’m leaving Instagram essay” but here is the case for moderation.

• Is menopause getting worse? Scientists say it is. (The Washington Post)
  Great. Just, great.

• The East Coast Is Sinking (Gifted NYT link) 🤦🏻‍♀️

• The Lost Words: An Illustrated Dictionary of Poetic Spells Reclaiming the Language of Nature (The Marginalian)
  “In early 2015, when the 10,000-entry Oxford children’s dictionary dropped around fifty words related to nature — words like fern, willow, and starling — in favor of terms like broadband and cut and paste, some of the world’s most prominent authors composed an open letter of protest and alarm at this impoverishment of children’s vocabulary and its consequent diminishment of children’s belonging to and with the natural world.” 

• Why I hope my parents won’t read my novel (The Guardian)

And this literally blew my mind:

Did you know about this???

1. menopause

2. I haven’t deleted my profiles on any of these apps because it’s the only way that I can keep in touch with some people I care about. Plus my kids are on IG. How am I going to see what they’re doing in college if I don’t peep their stories? But like my teens, who only post stories occasionally, I’ll likely use it mostly as a messenger app.

3. I’m still on one social media platform and that is Threads. I know, I KNOW. I kinda trashed it when it first launched. I’M SORRY! But it’s been a surprising joy. Plus my kids aren’t on Threads. As far I can tell, it’s just a bunch of us old folks trying to resurrect the early days of Twitter—and somewhat succeeding. At least until it goes to crap. Which it will, eventually.