Little timelapse of my photo studies!

It’s 3 different references but I put and improvised together ;D

Waiting for results to become a witch

Did you get in?

I wished I did ;P

Personal ramble on hermit life, tackling mental health around social media as an artist & panicking about art direction

Been doing some life admin, procrastinating on some others, planning, struggling to relax my painful & tense body, dealing with some headaches, trying to keep warm and continuing to reflect and panic with an existential and creative crisis on where I’m taking my art. I think I know where to start(???) but I’m not certain and doubts often come up about it :<

Finding myself staring into space a lot. Mulling things over. Haven’t been artistically productive as I sort out and sit with my headspace and mindset and recover/manage my low energy tank. I feel like this is going to take an indefinite and longer while as I try to emotionally process my feelings towards all this.

It becomes “what I can tolerate doing more?” in some ways. Nothing is 100% enjoyable and I need to make sure I enjoy it enough to be able to keep doing and iterate something without burning myself out. I shouldn’t have to force myself to do what I don’t already do. What do I already do naturally? Got to keep experimenting as well. There’s so many shiny things and possibilities that I need to block out because I’m definitely inspired but I don’t really naturally do nor necessarily enjoy doing those things.

I need to switch over from thinking and feeling and start testing things and fail fast too :<

As a hermit, I can only put myself out there through social media so I’ve been pretty much readjusting my mindset and being aware of my mental health around it on an ongoing and lifelong basis. I know I’ve been stuck for years. Listening/taking in other artist perspectives too on how they balance and mentally/emotionally take care of themselves. With a grain of salt of course because a lot of them have already “made it” and have reaped the benefits of having a large audience and have pushed themselves to be social, involved and interactive online. Now they have the luxury to not hustle/engage/post too much on social media since they’re stable with their connections, career and work to care about falling metrics and algorithm changes. Other artists are jaded, isolated and/or don’t want to care too much anymore but still have to somewhat – like me!

I’m striving to be neutral so that I can “play the social media game” on my own personal terms and boundaries. I’m not an actively social person nor do I check my feed for the sake of my mental health so all I have to work with is how post my stuff out there :’)

Common general advice I found and agree with: establish mindful & healthy boundaries for yourself while keeping it consistent on your own terms with social media. And keep away from feeds if you need to – like I do! Also just give up trying to get more engaged followers; focus on your artistic growth, personal wellbeing, learning, creating and sharing your art! Protect the joy in your craft and work! This is difficult because everything seems pressure you to “post more” and/or “post everyday”.

Platforms want you to keep making consistent, regular content like a machine to keep visitors within the platform. So for twitter (and probably other places) too much text with art, outbound links, tagging people, certain words to do with commissions/tips/patreon/etc in your tweet and not trending hashtags deboost your posts :< Apparently replies to your own popular tweets may/may not deboost your main post based on a few anecdotes?? So you can’t really promote/link anything unless you’re willing to take the hit…?

It’s pretty frustrating to have to jump through all these hoops in order to be seen by more people and by your own followers. From the beginning, I went for a twitter bot for my blog updates because it automates posting links for me, links do punish the exposure of my art and it keeps my blog updates and art separate for people. Ironically now my twitter bot is where I can ramble a lot since it’s being punished anyway for outbound links anyway ;P I was stubborn before while now I accept that I can’t ramble much at my main twitter posts. It’s sad in some ways. My main twitter is becoming an art focused place I suppose :’)

It is what it is, platforms are not made to be artist friendly.

Don’t let “making content to post” dictate the way you make art in a bad way! For me it can both be good and bad because having a schedule ensures I don’t fall complacent and lazy so I keep learning and creating a habit. The downside of that is not being able to make something of quality each time and I feel like I’m stuck running in this hamster wheel led by the fickle, always changing algorithms of the internet. Consequently taking breaks are very important to allow breathing room, recovery from burnout & rest away from art related things!

I say that but I struggle with relaxing myself. Easier said than done on a day to day basis :’)

Anyhoo I am busy juggling and trying to keep things low stress as usual; I hope you’re juggling okay, staying safe and may you have lots of magical positive things your way this week! :0

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