I quit Instagram at the beginning of the year and it was a wonderful decision for my mental health. I still struggle with phone addiction to other apps but logging off Insta was the right first step. I wish we had more support/conversation around phone addiction other than “yeah we’re all addicted to our phones lol!” It’s brave of you to quit, especially as an artist, and also shows a deep trust in yourself that your art will still makes its way into other hands. Fun fact, I learned about you bc I randomly checked out Getting to Center at my library and fell in love with your work ☺️
I can't help but feel like this is where we are all eventually headed. Whatever is happening right certainly doesn't feel sustainable. I feel that places like Substack are just the beginning of a new era of internet. Still, I'm so fascinating by the wave of emotions that come up for me when I even just SEE someone else quit IG. This is a good reminder that we can be terrified and do it anyway.
Just wanted to celebrate you for retiring from Instagram, for naming the layers of what it takes from you, and allowing yourself to risk your greatest fears happening so that you can instead be freer in the here and now. I have been trying to process for myself and find a way to talk about this phone addiction thing with friends without sounding like a judgmental jerk. I haven’t figured that part out yet but your words really help :) I quit social media in 2020 and have never regretted it. And of course, I still use my phone more than I would like, quitting social didn’t solve everything, but I’m proud of myself when people tell me I use my phone less than anyone they know. 🙃honestly, I’m irrelevant and I love it! As an added bonus, it’s also helped me cultivate and center my important and true relationships, because people actually have to prioritize reaching out to me to know how I am or what I’m doing. 😌good stuff. Good on you, Mar, and thanks for sharing. (As a side note, I have known of you via the Internet for years, and although i think i originally found you on insta, your work has stayed in my consciousness without social media!)
I quit instagram a year ago and it totally changed my life and mind and capacity. It’s wild how slow yet how quick the false reality of social media will dissolve when you commit to the quitting! Cheering you on!
Yes yes yes! I was waiting for this one, I felt like it was coming. Haha. Is that a creepy parasocial thing to say? I hope not. Anyway, where’s Amelia Hruby?! I’ve listened to every episode of her pod thanks to your recommendation on this newsletter, and I can imagine she’s somewhere slow clapping.
I took a break from IG last fall when work was so busy and didn’t want to spend an hour of my non-working time scrolling mind-numbingly through the feed. I didn’t miss it like I thought I would and was shocked that I didn’t cheat. I had some FOMO but that faded. It’s been a year and I don’t miss it at all. If a friend sends me a link to something and it opens the IG app, I get so stressed out by the platform because I’m no longer desensitized to it and get off ASAP. Once or twice I’ve lingered to see if my celebrity crush has posted about her GF yet and an hour goes by. I feel gross but that feeling reminds me why I don’t use it anymore. I’ve found other things on my phone to suck my time but I notice it quicker now. Cultivating mindful attention is exhausting sometimes but IG is way more draining in the long run. May we all find the balance of community through virtual connection and the freedom of disconnection.
Reading this made my heart race because I know I need to quit. It's like hearing about people quitting drinking years ago - it felt so *about me* because I knew I needed to quit. Professionally, it's tough. I don't miss my personal account but my work insta gives me just enough inspiration and then comparison, rage, self-flagellation, the works. Thanks for your honesty.
Marlee, this is one of the most nourishing and beautiful posts on quitting social media that I’ve read, and of course it’s on Substack where all the cool people are 😊
As an artist, I really felt your words deeply. The idea about word of mouth, flyers and billboards sounds so wholesome and old-fashioned. Last year I garnered support for an art project, from people in my neighbourhood by writing letters to the residents and posting it through their doors. It felt more, real, it was like a whole different way of creating, rather than a creating quick social media post. I spent the time writing the letters, putting my energy, focus and intention into those letters, and physically walking around my block to post the letters. There’s something so rewarding about that, more human, more real-world social. I’m totally not anti-social media either, I just have come to that crossroads as you have, it has been wonderful in so many ways.
I admire you for leaving Instagram after having many followers, you had a lot more skin in the game than most artists I know, in terms of having a big following, but the reality of leaving that behind is a lot more rewarding for you.
This insight came to me when reading your post, I’ll try and articulate it:
As artists (or anyone trying to promote their work on social media) we can easily get caught in the trap of yearning for likes and comments but also getting caught in the scrolling trap, that is obvious to us all. The big point is that social media IS the locus of our lives, phones ARE the locus of our lives, we do whatever we do but it always comes back to the phone. With your act of quitting Instagram, you’re declaring that “Instagram is not my locus of my life, I want to live in reality and create my art on my terms”. Having the social media locus makes us feel like we have to do the “social media bit” right after the lovely “creating bit” so it becomes this vicious cycle, rather than getting lost and deepening the “creating bit”.
Keep up your great writing! I have just 'paid subscribed'. :-)
Sep 25, 2023·edited Sep 25, 2023Liked by Cody Cook-Parrott
"Talking to my neighbor about poop felt so much better than being addicted to my phone." OH HELLO, this is the banger anthem sentence I did not know I needed. Celebrating your big quit so much, my friend! May this usher in an era of wild abundance — abundance of poop talk, of money, of artist residency joy, of flowers, of laying in the meadow and screaming with delight.
Congratulations Mar! This is the part I didn't have time to share about in my three minutes during our TAW meeting on Sunday: that bit about my capacity for delight broadening as a result of the process? I was off IG for the twelve weeks, and my mind started becoming quiet and calm enough to notice the small and lovely things in my life. Social media is fuelled by other people sharing capital-M MASTERPIECES, BIG DEALS, etc, and I realise that the hyperfocus on finished, sharable, hashtag-impressive things robs me of the joy that comes with taking the small, daily steps, because they feel... clumsy? Insignifcant? I, too, want to revel in the joys of living on Earth, in my practice, and in the sawdust pile, waking up and taking it one day at a time. On a side note, I didn't give anyone my IG handle during my open studio, I had a clipboard with a pen and enthusiastic people wanting to sign up for updates, workshops, to know more. Cannot wait to write, straight to them, and trust that it, and I, will land. Thank you as always for sharing <3
Yes yes. What’s fascinating to me is that some things that I thought would be hard to quit (drinking) were so easy for me yet social media (and manyyyy of my avoidant tendencies) are sealed so tightly to me. Lots of things to discover in that.
This is all resonating so much with me. I still have Instagram and Twitter accounts, and I check them very infrequently, but I'm starting to sit with this idea of deleting them entirely. I notice that having them means I know in the back of my head that I can go on there, and even those lingering dust bunnies of possibility disrupt my creative flow. I'd rather have the possibility of receiving a lightning flash of an idea than the possibility of scrolling, feeling bad, and buying things.
I needed this post. I’ve wasted so much time agonizing over how IG makes me feel and have also accepted the “good” will never balance out the negative for me.
No one talks about either how it can feel so embarrassing or shameful to admit that you can’t handle balancing the addiction. I want to be someone that can balance it, and believe some can. I just can’t. I’ve also logged off for what I hope will be the last time.
If you're interested in listening to two friends talking about SATC and how it continues to make them feel, may I recommend the Sentimental in the City podcast mini-series.
I quit Instagram at the beginning of the year and it was a wonderful decision for my mental health. I still struggle with phone addiction to other apps but logging off Insta was the right first step. I wish we had more support/conversation around phone addiction other than “yeah we’re all addicted to our phones lol!” It’s brave of you to quit, especially as an artist, and also shows a deep trust in yourself that your art will still makes its way into other hands. Fun fact, I learned about you bc I randomly checked out Getting to Center at my library and fell in love with your work ☺️
I can't help but feel like this is where we are all eventually headed. Whatever is happening right certainly doesn't feel sustainable. I feel that places like Substack are just the beginning of a new era of internet. Still, I'm so fascinating by the wave of emotions that come up for me when I even just SEE someone else quit IG. This is a good reminder that we can be terrified and do it anyway.
Just wanted to celebrate you for retiring from Instagram, for naming the layers of what it takes from you, and allowing yourself to risk your greatest fears happening so that you can instead be freer in the here and now. I have been trying to process for myself and find a way to talk about this phone addiction thing with friends without sounding like a judgmental jerk. I haven’t figured that part out yet but your words really help :) I quit social media in 2020 and have never regretted it. And of course, I still use my phone more than I would like, quitting social didn’t solve everything, but I’m proud of myself when people tell me I use my phone less than anyone they know. 🙃honestly, I’m irrelevant and I love it! As an added bonus, it’s also helped me cultivate and center my important and true relationships, because people actually have to prioritize reaching out to me to know how I am or what I’m doing. 😌good stuff. Good on you, Mar, and thanks for sharing. (As a side note, I have known of you via the Internet for years, and although i think i originally found you on insta, your work has stayed in my consciousness without social media!)
I quit instagram a year ago and it totally changed my life and mind and capacity. It’s wild how slow yet how quick the false reality of social media will dissolve when you commit to the quitting! Cheering you on!
Yes yes yes! I was waiting for this one, I felt like it was coming. Haha. Is that a creepy parasocial thing to say? I hope not. Anyway, where’s Amelia Hruby?! I’ve listened to every episode of her pod thanks to your recommendation on this newsletter, and I can imagine she’s somewhere slow clapping.
I took a break from IG last fall when work was so busy and didn’t want to spend an hour of my non-working time scrolling mind-numbingly through the feed. I didn’t miss it like I thought I would and was shocked that I didn’t cheat. I had some FOMO but that faded. It’s been a year and I don’t miss it at all. If a friend sends me a link to something and it opens the IG app, I get so stressed out by the platform because I’m no longer desensitized to it and get off ASAP. Once or twice I’ve lingered to see if my celebrity crush has posted about her GF yet and an hour goes by. I feel gross but that feeling reminds me why I don’t use it anymore. I’ve found other things on my phone to suck my time but I notice it quicker now. Cultivating mindful attention is exhausting sometimes but IG is way more draining in the long run. May we all find the balance of community through virtual connection and the freedom of disconnection.
"I am willing to risk dissolving into nothingness" this 🥺
Reading this made my heart race because I know I need to quit. It's like hearing about people quitting drinking years ago - it felt so *about me* because I knew I needed to quit. Professionally, it's tough. I don't miss my personal account but my work insta gives me just enough inspiration and then comparison, rage, self-flagellation, the works. Thanks for your honesty.
Marlee, this is one of the most nourishing and beautiful posts on quitting social media that I’ve read, and of course it’s on Substack where all the cool people are 😊
As an artist, I really felt your words deeply. The idea about word of mouth, flyers and billboards sounds so wholesome and old-fashioned. Last year I garnered support for an art project, from people in my neighbourhood by writing letters to the residents and posting it through their doors. It felt more, real, it was like a whole different way of creating, rather than a creating quick social media post. I spent the time writing the letters, putting my energy, focus and intention into those letters, and physically walking around my block to post the letters. There’s something so rewarding about that, more human, more real-world social. I’m totally not anti-social media either, I just have come to that crossroads as you have, it has been wonderful in so many ways.
I admire you for leaving Instagram after having many followers, you had a lot more skin in the game than most artists I know, in terms of having a big following, but the reality of leaving that behind is a lot more rewarding for you.
This insight came to me when reading your post, I’ll try and articulate it:
As artists (or anyone trying to promote their work on social media) we can easily get caught in the trap of yearning for likes and comments but also getting caught in the scrolling trap, that is obvious to us all. The big point is that social media IS the locus of our lives, phones ARE the locus of our lives, we do whatever we do but it always comes back to the phone. With your act of quitting Instagram, you’re declaring that “Instagram is not my locus of my life, I want to live in reality and create my art on my terms”. Having the social media locus makes us feel like we have to do the “social media bit” right after the lovely “creating bit” so it becomes this vicious cycle, rather than getting lost and deepening the “creating bit”.
Keep up your great writing! I have just 'paid subscribed'. :-)
"Talking to my neighbor about poop felt so much better than being addicted to my phone." OH HELLO, this is the banger anthem sentence I did not know I needed. Celebrating your big quit so much, my friend! May this usher in an era of wild abundance — abundance of poop talk, of money, of artist residency joy, of flowers, of laying in the meadow and screaming with delight.
Congratulations Mar! This is the part I didn't have time to share about in my three minutes during our TAW meeting on Sunday: that bit about my capacity for delight broadening as a result of the process? I was off IG for the twelve weeks, and my mind started becoming quiet and calm enough to notice the small and lovely things in my life. Social media is fuelled by other people sharing capital-M MASTERPIECES, BIG DEALS, etc, and I realise that the hyperfocus on finished, sharable, hashtag-impressive things robs me of the joy that comes with taking the small, daily steps, because they feel... clumsy? Insignifcant? I, too, want to revel in the joys of living on Earth, in my practice, and in the sawdust pile, waking up and taking it one day at a time. On a side note, I didn't give anyone my IG handle during my open studio, I had a clipboard with a pen and enthusiastic people wanting to sign up for updates, workshops, to know more. Cannot wait to write, straight to them, and trust that it, and I, will land. Thank you as always for sharing <3
This was so good and so relatable ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Yes yes. What’s fascinating to me is that some things that I thought would be hard to quit (drinking) were so easy for me yet social media (and manyyyy of my avoidant tendencies) are sealed so tightly to me. Lots of things to discover in that.
This is all resonating so much with me. I still have Instagram and Twitter accounts, and I check them very infrequently, but I'm starting to sit with this idea of deleting them entirely. I notice that having them means I know in the back of my head that I can go on there, and even those lingering dust bunnies of possibility disrupt my creative flow. I'd rather have the possibility of receiving a lightning flash of an idea than the possibility of scrolling, feeling bad, and buying things.
I needed this post. I’ve wasted so much time agonizing over how IG makes me feel and have also accepted the “good” will never balance out the negative for me.
No one talks about either how it can feel so embarrassing or shameful to admit that you can’t handle balancing the addiction. I want to be someone that can balance it, and believe some can. I just can’t. I’ve also logged off for what I hope will be the last time.
If you're interested in listening to two friends talking about SATC and how it continues to make them feel, may I recommend the Sentimental in the City podcast mini-series.
P.s. much for me to think about re Instagram.