Work Notes 

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Dear reader, 

One year ago I made the decision to permanently delete my social media accounts hosted on Instagram. An archive of twelve years of projects, classes, and books along with my ten year project Personal Practice that included over nine hundred dance videos.

I thought about this decision for years. It wasn’t flippant or manic, it was long thought out with dozens of trials and experiments to ease app addiction and outside validation needs. It was in the process of writing my book, The Practice of Attention, that lead me to the decision to delete the accounts, rather than just deactivate them.

I think I needed to know what it felt like, for them to totally vanish. To feel into the void of no longer having these floating business cards of success. To no longer be able to login just to check something quick, only to lose hours on the app.

In the last thirty eight years of life, thirteen years of self employment, and fifteen years of sobriety, I have regretted very little. I consider everything a guessing game of luck and good measure, and I felt like my newsletter was strong enough to hold my business and my practices.

I was wrong, and I regret deleting my accounts and want to share that openly so that other artists and small business owners don’t make the same mistake.

I know plenty of people who leave social media and never regret it, and I did a lot of looking towards those people to feel confident in my own decision. But what I forgot to do was really look within at the benefits of my accounts, specifically in the way that they made ROOM for my creativity, not blocked it. I never fell short of artistic efforts in my time on Instagram. Always able to come up with new class ideas, make dozens of quilts, and create dance videos to my favorite songs.

And yet, I continuosly felt like I couldn’t put it down, no matter how many hacks I tried. App blockers, Brick, putting the phone in the car while I worked, deleting the app off my phone. None of it really seemed to work.

I have since made a new account that I often deactivate for long periods of time while I continue to parse through the feelings that social media brings up for me. It’s humbling to go from 80k followers to 500 and see how that feels internally. It’s humbling to still have to tend to the struggles of looking at the app for too long.

What I notice the most and miss is : I spent over a decade building an audience that I can’t get back. And Instagram has changed so much since I originally set out to do that. In order to do that from 2012-2016 I just had to be good at my job, running Have Company. I didn’t need to make short form content as reels or put music on a post.

I don’t know that I have what it takes or that I want to put the work in to grow on an app that rewards short form videos designed to fracture your attention. At the same time, my dance videos that I started making in 2015 never felt like a throw away in the attention economy, they felt like a steady service of movement.

Usually when we talk about grief we might save it for the big stuff. Death of a loved one, pain of the turning world. for genocide, for war, for personal pain. Because of this I have continued to stuff the grief of deleting my archives in a belief that it is an unworthy feeling. An embarassing one at that.

I find that pouring this discomfort into my art is the best answer. By making beach blankets out of scraps, journaling for an hour, dancing in the kitchen by myself, and creating classes and workshops that delight me. It is so easy to freeze up and feel small and not want to put the work into creation. I’m still working through this.

My social media accounts were these tiny bits of evidence of the work I put in over the years in my practice and my many businesses and spaces. I never went viral or had a huge jump. I just consistently put the work in and the numbers grew. These numbers offered me a lot of opportunities. Like my first book deal with How to Not Always be Working, my class with Skillshare, and the many doors of self employment that were opened.

Without it I feel a little stuck, unmoored, unfamiliar with myself and unsure where to put the creative energy I once put into Instagram. Do I use my new account to share my wins, my losses, my regrets? Will I use the new account just as a place holder so people can tag and find me? Will I use it to post dance videos again?

Much of it feels up for conversation and debate, still finding my way through to the other side of a return. In many ways I like it, I love seeing what my friends are up to and open calls for residencies and writing submissions. And I wonder a bit what the point is if I’m not going to give into the reels of it all. Or will I?

I loved making my YouTube videos and used an easy editing program to make them that people primarily use for reels. Maybe there is a video making path in my future.

What I know is : Promoting yourself can feel really embarassing, especially when you have a small audience. I’d dare say it’s almost harder because you are so exposed and vulnerable. Maybe it’s time for me to play a little more within that and stop feeling so silly in the newness.

If you want to follow along I’d love to have you. And if you want to be on Instagram less yourself I’d love if you didn’t. The chess game continues where I’m not sure how it all fits together but I do know I want to stay self employed. That is a whole other can of worms : How is my business really doing this year, especially without a large social media presence? More on this to come.

For now, thank you for reading. Thank you for sticking around while I publicly navigate my relationship to technology and business. You are not alone in your struggles to be an artist, writer, or creative business owner navigating the fine balance of using addictive apps for both the benefit of our work and the detriment to our mental health. Every day is a winding road!

→ My quilting class with Green Door Folk School in The New York Times with beautiful photos by Lindsey Mak

→ Expanding Curatorial Practice Through a Black Feminist Lens with Dr. Sahrbreon Plummer July 28 2026 Online + In Person

→ The amazing Selah Saterstrom is teaching Essay Intensive : Three New Works in August and September - sliding scale and payment plans available

→ Radiator Hospital put out a new single from upcoming album DISTORTING TIME

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