I'm Too Scared to Post Anything on Instagram.

It's literally my job.

This year, I’ve spent time I’d normally spend making over rooms making over my body (and more importantly my health). Also I included this pic to balance out the semi-heavy tone of this essay. SEE HOW THAT WORKS???

I’ve been trying to put out a balance of thoughts in this newsletter. Trying to find the balance between light and dark, funny and serious, thoughtful and frivolous. In a way, I guess I feel like I used up all my “wow this is hard” cards during the past four years when my show was canceled, my house was nearly destroyed by a million natural disasters, and I found myself stuck in a hyperloop of insanely stressful financial terror. If you’ve been following along, here and on my Instagram account, you know it hasn’t necessarily been a walk in the park.

I don’t need to rehash everything, that’s not the point of this. For the most part, it’s been a really great year. I am feeling much happier and have been much more capable of taking care of myself and the people around me because I am generally happier. But my strategy for finding joy hasn’t been without its faults. Mostly, I’ve been compartmentalizing different stressors into “I’m just gonna deal with that later” boxes. I’m doing this because I kind of refuse to be unhappy. I’m also doing this because when you are unhappy, people always blame you for it. They don’t blame a set of circumstances you’re facing that they themselves might feel overwhelmed by and thus made unhappy by. They blame you.

We live in a culture where it’s so ingrained in us that if we try hard enough we can achieve anything that sometimes we end up blaming ourselves for shit that isn’t really even our fault. Which was kind of my situation the past four years. It was just a set of circumstances that were particularly challenging combined with some very dumb decisions I would never have made had I known what I know now. It was an unhappy-making situation that’s now over.

This year, I’ve been concentrating on doing things that make me feel happy and healthy while also trying to concentrate on continuing to set up income streams that are less time-consuming and overwhelming than my old ones (particularly long term client work and extremely involved, low-paying collaborations that require I do entire home makeovers alone with no help). This “try new things” strategy has worked to a certain degree, in that I am developing things like this newsletter, my Airbnb is in the beginning stages of profitability, and I have some product collaborations and ideas I’m excited about (and will be paid for).

But one thing definitely isn’t working for me this year. I’m feeling fucking petrified to post anything on Instagram.

This happens sometimes when you’re someone like me who runs a big Instagram account alone. Many people at this level have assistants and other people who are responsible for running their social accounts. For someone like me who works alone, there’s just not a lot of accountability - it’s not like I have coworkers being like “Hey do think you should post something today?”

I have mixed feelings about being an influencer, I think that’s pretty clear. But it is how I’ve made most of my money for a long time now. And don’t get my wrong I am thankful for it and I do appreciate that I get to make my living using my creativity and that I get to be selective about the brands I choose to work with. But it is a job. And to bring in work, part of the job is you need to POST (that’s how brand collaborators find you). But I just can’t make myself post.

I’ve been kind of confused about this and really only came to a full understanding of it a few days ago. First of all, it’s obviously a practical, logistical thing. I spent the last four years breaking my body doing a TON of home renovation projects so I could document them. That cost me a lot of money but was also INSANELY time consuming and very, very lonely. It destroyed my body, gave me planter fasciitis, made my hair fall out, and made me gain fifty pounds. Doing that many projects alone, on top of documenting and sharing them, on top of working with clients and doing a myriad of other random gigs, really took it out of me. So I think subconsciously I just hit pause on doing any more home projects for a while. Plus, both my houses are set up so I don’t really “need” do anything.

I’ve been trying to be creative about the type of content I produce, which is why I've tried to go in a more holistic storytelling direction in this newsletter. I’m trying to show that I can do more than just fluff pillows and choose colors. I have trained my entire life to be a thoughtful storyteller, and I’d like to start telling those stories. But practically speaking, I need to keep doing Instagram. At least for a while.

So I’ve been asking myself, “Wait, am I just quiet quitting Instagram because I hate it?” The answer is sort of yes but not really. Like many content creators, I’ve hated what Instagram did to its algorithm to compete with TikTok, which means things I used to get a TON of views on get way less play. For example, my Instagram stories used to get 30,000 views, now they get 6,000 if I’m lucky. That may sounds stupid and like a popularity contest to you, but it’s more about the low percentage of engagement, so much fewer people I want to connect with are connecting with me. And things I spend a long time making can end up falling flat on their face. It’s weird to keep doing the same job for years and years, for me since 2013, and to have the returns you get for it start to get worse rather than better.

I don’t really think my fear of posting is about the stupid algorithm though. I think it’s about something much more troubling. For me, in many ways, Instagram became an incredibly dark place the past four years. It became a place where instead of feeling heard I started to feel gaslit. By almost two hundred thousand people. Where the more I tried to explain my story as a means of hopefully reaching people in similar spaces of struggle, the more I got called spoiled and entitled. The more I tried to be honest, to topple the whole “everything is perfect” vibe of that app, the more people got turned off.

People called me weak for not being able to shovel ten feet of snow off my house with the tiny shovel I had. People thought I was dumb for not predicting an unprecedented wind storm. People called me careless for getting an apartment in town when I thought I was making enough money and the house would be rented out soon. Time after time, people came into the comments and DMs to tell me how dumb and spoiled and irresponsible I was. But I was already feeling all those things. I didn’t need to hear it from the outside.

Then when I’d mention being depressed or overwhelmed, again as a means of hopefully reaching other people who were because I understand the responsibility of having a platform like mine, people would tell me I was complaining. People would insult me and pick me apart, causing me distress which would cause me to be unhappy. Then they’d blame me for my unhappiness and say I was just being a miserable person.

What. A. Fucking. Mind. Fuck.

By the end of those four years, I was convinced that I’d completely lost my mind and made it all up. That’s what thousands of people online were telling me. And I believed that until I got back to LA, started to regain my life, and realized that I’d been in a really challenging spot for years that no one outside of me will likely ever be able to fully understand. Was it the hardest thing anyone in the world has ever dealt with? No. But the combination of stressors and logistical issues I faced were a lot to handle.

Being alone in the woods with thousands of people telling me the reality of the situation I was in was different than what I was actually experiencing was definitely crazy-making. And it’s something I’m not eager to return to (I’ve also been too scared to go back to my cabin since Christmas, which is bad because there’s stuff I need to take care of up there). I just don’t want to go back to any of that.

That’s what I’m worried about. That weird gas lighty feeling is what I am scared to go back to. I’ve been writing about and sharing my life since in was right out of school. And for the most part I’ve had the fortitude and the self confidence to deal with this kind of thing. But I just don’t right now. I’m feeling like I’m on a very perilous edge of dipping back into the deep anxiety and depression space I just escaped from. I’m one Instagram post away from going right back there.

At the end of last year I decided I should take January off Instagram. I never actually ended up announcing it, I just kind of did it. And I haven’t really gone back except to promote this newsletter from time to time. I have a few makeover projects in the works. My kitchen, first and foremost needs to get shot once a few issues are dealt with. And my LA bedroom is getting an overhaul that I should be ready to document soon.

But I’m having trouble motivating to produce more makeovers. I’m having trouble feeling motivated to share things. In getting back to the “Am I quiet quitting Instagram?” question, the answer is definitely NO. I feel so lucky that I get to make and share things as my job. And I think I have more clarity than ever right now about the fact that I find it much more exciting to inspire everyday people and show them things they can do on their own to make their homes beautiful.

Something I’ve decided to try and stop doing all the time this year is second guessing myself. So while my first judgement of myself is “Shit, you are really not doing what you need to do to support yourself.” My second through its, “Maybe you’re just taking the break you need to return with refreshed eyes in the spring.” I have been using the time to diversify my income streams and I think in the long run that will be of value to me - the influencer marketing economy has been a complete shitshow since covid started.

I want to keep making and sharing things on Instagram. But I think I just needed some space from something that has just turned really sour for me the past four years. The idea is to come back better when I’ve had to reset. But for now, the idea of posting anything on Instagram is fucking scary.

Hopefully I can find the confidence to go back when I need to…