One night, up way too late and sucked into the blue light of the infinite scroll, I discovered a new-to-me, quilt-centric corner of the internet. Gorgeous photos, sumptuous and tactile textiles, breathtaking landscapes, everything just so. Antique this. Perfectly-faded that.
I was entranced. And enraged. I hated it; I couldn’t get enough of it. I sent screenshots to my best friend writing, “this makes my skin crawl, I hate this, I hate it! and also why doesn’t my life look exactly like this.”
This was June, 2021. So much has changed since that time. But when I found my notes on this experience, I thought it worth trying to sift through those same feelings. It’s also true that a lot of those feelings, and internal dialogue, have led me back here — to blogging. A practice I have been telling myself I would reconnect with for years, and am finally wading in to.
There was a time (so many years ago now) when I thought that “building an audience” on IG was something I should aspire to. It didn’t feel feasible, but it didn’t seem impossible. Other people did it, somehow. And after quitting a job back in 2017, I told myself I wouldn’t go back to cog-in-a-machine desk work; I started contracting, working for two local woman-run small businesses and telling myself, I would learn from them. How to succeed, how to survive off your creative passions. And eventually, that would be what I was doing.
In the years between then and now, many an artist has told me verbatim that in fact, what they “sell” is the idea of an artist’s lifestyle. Of creativity, or freedom, of beauty and appreciation, of “slow” and “authentic” and so many of these other noxious hashtag terms. That the goal is to stoke the feeling of desire (read: the envy, the feeling of lack) in those of us who feel our lives look different but who want to believe that by owning some part of this creative fantasy, we can tap into this vein. It’s not as if I didn’t know this already, even if I hadn’t articulated it to myself. But I have to tell you, hearing it out of other women’s mouths, directly — about what it takes to survive as an artist, about the ongoing marketing of themselves, more so even than their work — is a hard thing to stare down.
Like many fellow Instagram users, I have only become more agitated with the platform in the year since I found that particularly highly-curated quilt-centric account. As of this writing it has become a video-centric platform, where I see as many advertisements as I do friends’ photos, and to which I recognize I have a frightening dopamine addiction. I haven’t been able to walk away from it entirely (yet), but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is not — and never will be again — the community-platform I long for in terms of reaching other makers, quilters, artists, knitters, textile enthusiasts, art-appreciators, friends, strangers, &c. I also know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I cannot behave there in the ways the algorithm requires to “build an audience.” I also know: that is perfectly acceptable to me. I have no internal conflict about whether I “should” try. (An aside: this is in no way meant to shame those who do. Decisions about digital presence are as complex and variable as the lives of each person making them. I simply know, unequivocally, that that platform steals my joy; so I know, simply, that I must work to be less present there, not more.)
Work, and life, have been infinitely more complicated in those years since 2017. I am back at a “cog” desk job. I can say, I believe entirely honestly, that I no longer harbor any interest whatsoever in making my art practice my livelihood. These have both been their own large, tumultuous transitions. There are both unfortunate and fortunate elements about both facts. But one fortunate element is: I don’t have to try to sell the idea of myself, of who I am, of my “artist’s life.”
I don’t want to create another place on the internet that sells someone the fantasy of a picturesque life; I do not have a picturesque life. I am messy, my life is messy, and there are threads (literal and metaphorical) everywhere that if yanked, threaten to unravel the whole thing. And why yes, I did spend a few years as a photoshoot stylist, and yes I have (and do) edit my own image-sharing very carefully. Guilty, guilty. And yet, and yet. I have a deep desire to resist, to rage against the continued, careful curation of how we present our lives to each other. I have a deep desire for a more fully human picture, more humanity, more transparency. I have a desire for connectivity, and community.
I have no understanding of how to succeed in this task.
But in the interim, I am returning here. To long form writing on the internet. To a space away from a platform designed to shorten and dilute our attention, and sell us things, especially our discontents. To a place one can choose to visit, purposefully, if one desires — and ignore easily and entirely if not. If you are here, I am so glad to have you. I have blogged off and on since the days of Xanga, in the early 2000s, going on 20 years. And while it is clear that the heyday of the blogosphere, and the communities built there, are long behind us — I’d posit that the utility and beauty of its simplicity are not. And truly — whether two of you join me here, or two thousand — it offers me more hope for what it is I believe that I want, that I am reaching towards, when I am moved to share my work.
Thank you for being here.