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I’ve tried to take a month-long Instagram break while I continue writing my book, but it’s not going well. I find myself deleting the app only to reinstall it a day or two later. Because of some bullshit, Instagram has my account on lockdown, meaning I can’t do certain things (go live, my account won’t be recommend to non-followers, no monetization for any reels I create). It’s all ridiculous and writing about it feels equally ridiculous.
I hold a lot of resentment for this thing that I created in 2011. For the fact that, though I have a following, it doesn’t actually mean anything. It doesn’t make me money and I am in need of making money (aren’t we all?)
I try to spend time on Substack, even though I have a small (yet mighty) readership and only 77 paid subscribers (a number I have been trying to grow for two years). On Instagram and on Substack, I can’t escape my own self-doubt and questioning: “Do people like what I have to offer at all?”
I begin to worry that nobody will buy my book. I begin to worry that everything I do, all of the hard times on and off social media have been for naught. Obviously, money does not equal worth. I know many people appreciate me, my art, my existence. But soaking into this feels impossible in late-stage capitalism. I’m constantly grappling with what people might want from me and what I want to do. I spend far too much time worrying about other people. But if I don’t give people what they want, how can I expect them to want to pay for anything I make?
It feels bleak and exciting that Instagram is dying—that less people are using it. I’m regretful and sad that I put so much of my life into a bullshit app that never loved me back. I’m sad that I don’t feel like I was given my flowers for creating what I did when I did. Maybe it wasn’t anything special anyways. Maybe it was all in my head.
Just like I tried to fit in with the popular girls in middle school and high school, I’m now trying to fit in with the popular marxists, anarchists, and feminists online and off. I don’t like this.
I don’t want to want this anymore.
Writing my book is making me realize, yet again, that I don’t feel like I belong anywhere—not online, not offline. I have micro-communities with a handful of people, and maybe that’s all I really need. But I can’t shake the feeling of wanting more—wanting actual, genuine, reciprocal community. I thought that was what I created with Guerrilla Feminism, but it turned out to be community for everyone else—and I felt left out.
I continue to write because writing is, in some ways, all I know how to do. I don’t always feel like I belong in it, but I don’t need to. I just do it.
Maybe I belong and I just don’t feel it yet. I hope that changes.
what i'm doing about alice munro -
A Care-Centered Guide to Digitally Archiving Palestine zine - Librarians and Archivists with Palestine
A Scream For Gaza (via
) - Nabil EchchaibiThe Supreme Court Has Made It Official: US Presidents Are Now Monarchs - Marjorie Cohn
Love Is Not Enough: How We Can Strengthen & Expand Public Libraries (an upcoming webinar on Aug 1 that sounds amazing
We Were Cyborgs: On the Construction of the Self As a Teenage Girl - Olivia Gatwood (what amazing timing it was seeing this because I literally just finished a chapter of my book about beauty and “A Cyborg Manifesto”!)
Israel Attacks Four Schools in Gaza in Four Days, Killing 50 - Sharon Zhang
Workers demand that Planned Parenthood divest, but is the organization listening? - Nicole Froio
Is TikTok Saving Print Books and Bookstores? - Rebecca Joines Schinsky
A sweet song for you:
“Just like I tried to fit in with the popular girls in middle school and high school, I’m now trying to fit in with the popular marxists, anarchists, and feminists online and off. I don’t like this.” Ahhhh thank you for putting this into words. I feel this so hard. I feel like I never fit in and also struggle with IG / only use it minimally at
this point but struggle with where / how / why to share my writing and where it “belongs” too. That being said, I so resonate with your writing and can’t wait to read your book 💕
I don’t think you should sweat your insta presence much. Try getting your work out to leftists feminist YouTubers, they’ll use contemporary work in their videos and name drop books and that’s mainly how I find out about new books about society type genres. I find YouTube to be more engaging with its long form, that creators can really go in on your work and viewers are more than scrollers and will get invested in your work and actually order it. Alice Capelle is a good one! Instagram is just so fast that I feel like people just barely engage with content these days.