I don’t want to want this anymore
On Instagram and Belonging
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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:
Wow I deleted my Instagram account today. I took screenshots of old photos to archive memories I didn’t have saved elsewhere. I smoked a j and thought back to my professors in Prague who lived through the Cold War being spied on and it made me feel nervous having all that social media but truly i deleted it for the meaningless time I was spending on it. Seeing so many pictures of people that I followed from my past to hate-view their lives from the suburbs to the cities doing basic things like getting married, etc not giving a crap about climate change or racism. I enjoyed the leftists spaces but some of them were toxic and nothing was being accomplished from them. I read Digital Minimalism and was very convinced to give up social media. I might delete Facebook but it has so many photos to save. I just hate that I’m following people that back in the day, people just wouldn’t be able to keep up with but instead I see achievement culture posted online.
i feel like i could have written this post. part of what frustrates me so much abt the effort of trying to grow is that i don’t always have enough to invest in others the way i want to, or more importantly, in the ways that *they* need the most. but it has to be possible somehow, so i keep trying. im grateful that you are here. 🙏🏿✨