This post is, first and foremost, for myself. If I'm struggling with this stuff again in the future, I'd like to be able to come back here to reorient myself. It's not prescriptive. Some people have no problem with this kind of stuff!

I do also know a lot of people who post their work online can fall into the traps I'm going to be discussing, especially younger artists. I hope if you can relate, this post might help you in one way or another!

-Shey

The relationship between myself, my art, and social media hit a low point last year when I realized I'd started equating the value of a piece to the amount of engagement it received. While making art my mind was filled with anxiety about how it would perform. It made it hard to start and finish pieces. If a piece received less engagement than I was expecting, it didn't matter how much heart I had poured into it. I lost sight of whatever I had liked about it in the first place.

"Less engagement than I was expecting". How much engagement do I expect? Sure, my newest piece got 100 likes, but my last one got 200. So clearly, I must have done something wrong. Those 10 other factors that determine online engagement? I don't know what you're talking about! I must be losing my edge.

It may be easy to see how this mindset can throw you off your game.

So, what did I do about it? Realizing all of this didn't suddenly sever the neural connections I'd been forming since my late teens. But I'm able to use social media in a more healthy way and judge my artwork on more factors than "is number big?". Every solution centers around this (in hindsight, pretty obvious) idea:

Distance and time help. Here's some changes I've made to help maintain that distance, for longer and longer periods of time:

• reduced how many sites I post on
• stopped trying to keep up-to-date with social media feeds
• deleted all social media apps from my phone
• avoid browser versions of apps when possible (like with Discord, Dropbox, or Spotify)
• altered the layout of sites with things like
  • XKit Rewritten
  • Control Panel for Twitter
  • uBlock Origin's "block element" feature
  • Youtube Revanced (a pain for me to get working a year+ ago, but I can now hide/adjust so many mobile app elements- essential for me to block Shorts)
• muted twitter notifications from accounts I don't follow (thank you Mel for showing me this):

settings > notifications > filters > muted notifications > Mute notifications from people: You don't follow ✅

I made these changes gradually. It felt uncomfortable at first, but now they're my normal. I still check social media with my phone's browser at times, but the impulse is greatly reduced because of the extra steps involved in opening it.

These websites are designed to keep your attention. They benefit from you losing hours of your time on them.

I used to worry that I'd feel left out or leave other people feeling neglected if I pulled back online. It didn't happen. If I catch a post I like, I like it. If someone's username pops up in my mind, I'll go directly to their profile and interact with their posts however feels natural. And if I want to talk to an online friend, I message them- on a dedicated messaging app!