Social Media Musings

One of my goals this year is to make better use of my social media platforms. BlueSky made this easy because I found some art communities hosting daily challenges. I have enjoyed participating in those and connecting with other artists there through them. My blog here has been a real joy to maintain, posting typically twice a week, and I'll spend a good amount of time talking about that here.

But first I need to talk about Instagram.

I wish I could understand why, as a visual artist, I struggle to regularly engage with such a visual platform. I put together a very modest Instagram schedule for myself, with themes and ideas for posting that not only interested me but seemed relatively easy for me to carry out. Reader, I have had maybe one week in which I maintained my Instagram schedule. Even after I connected Instagram to my Pinterest (which yields a decent amount of engagement for little to no effort), I still can't seem to get excited about Instagram posts. It's the perfect medium to share my work! It's directly connected to another platform that seems primed to shove my work into algorithms! Still my brain steadfastly refuses to really connect with the platform.

I will have to figure out another approach to this.

As for blogging, this has been a real treat to come back to after so many years away. I have been feeling very disconnected from my writing for a while now. I am still able to produce work, but it seems like the stories have to be either fully formed or brimming over with inspirational momentum for me to write them. I have a couple of ideas that I've really wanted to write but they need my usual pantsing method of discovery. Whenever I sit down to start exploring my way through them, I can feel my output falling further and further away from the idea, in prose that feels mundane and mechanical. So having blogging as a writing outlet that I can rely on at least twice a week for a writing connection that doesn't feel like that is heaven. I'm hoping it can start translating to my other ideas, that it's just the practice I've been out of after Too Much Day Job.

Maybe blogging a bit about my Instagram block will help there as well? A girl can dream...