How to follow your gut about social media, when our guts are constantly filled with fluff?

Holding steady in your own truth may be the hardest task of them all

Hi there!

Welcome to Follow Your Gut, a newsletter about the artist life and business from the perspective of near decade long independent career (and motherhood).

To follow your gut can feel like a mountain to climb.

Not just that, you’ve got to constantly relocate where the top is or else you’ll slowly slide down again and have to start over.

It doesn’t really matter how aware we are of the noise machinery around us. It’s not a matter of “been there done that”, but more so a question of “did it, doing it, will do it again”.

To some extent the circular flow of recalibration points to the essence of the artist life. The constant recalibration and development of an inherent wisdom that stems from our own voice, not the noise, is an art in itself.

Since the beginning of the year I’ve been breaking a lot of old systems that don’t serve me anymore.

It’s not been visible to the eye, but it’s been felt to the bones.

I’ve slowly but surely been reclaiming space for myself. When there’s no space as so frequently happens in both entrepreneurship and motherhood, it gets even harder to listen to our guts. We kind of jump into the boat and sail away without reflection on where to anchor it.

I practice gentleness with self on a daily basis.

Reminding myself that I’m right on time and that I didn’t fail anything by not having been able to utilise (even less maximise!!) the privilege of an audience that I worked so hard to build.

For nearly five years I’ve hardly used my 500k + audience across Instagram, Pinterest and Youtube. Something I worked on daily for years, was suddenly completely out of my reach. I couldn’t do it even if I wanted to (or in truth; believed I should do).

I wrote my first honest “I’m tired of Instagram post” on my own blog in 2022 before the wave of others doing the same. But in 2022 I had already had it brewing for at least two years. I wrote a bit more about it in the essay “The real reason I quite instagram despite 200k followers”, where I pointed to my refusal to go from artist to momfluencer just because I became a mother who was already working as an artist.

My rational mind sometimes tells me “how hard is it to just put a picture up?”

But at some point when you’ve burnt yourself to the ground, just a picture is unattainable. Unbearable.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; I’m incredibly grateful for my email community, because it’s what has kept my business afloat all these years.

It was a blessing in disguise to fall off the social media treadmill despite obvious great success in the art niche. It showed me where the real impact happens. It also showed me what’s required to build a solid foundation that can carry you through shit-storms.

Shocker; It’s not on a platform… It’s OFF platform. At home.

We’re all being tricked into running for visible metrics when they’re the ones who’ll slowly chop at your soul’s work if not careful.

I just read

Holly Whitaker

‘s essay about Glennon’s presence here on Substack and it stroke a cord deep within me. I recognised the agony of being in the game, constant comparison and feelings of falling behind despite doing more more more.

I’m grateful to have had that experience and reached measurable success, but it also makes me reflect deeper on the platforms we use before falling into the trap anew.

Truth is: platforms always evolve. Always have, always will.

It’s not a platform that will save us, so we must never hand over our agency.

Legacy is built from within.

Legacy is built constructing your home and using whatever tools are available (and suitable) at the time to make your vision come to fruition (like building an email list!)

Here’s the catch we must never forget:

→ When a platform or service is free to use, it’s never out of generosity. If you don’t pay in cash, you’ll pay in other ways. Maybe with your sanity? At worst, your artist soul.

Bottom line is; Platforms must always remain tools or else they’ll consume us.

A tool means that you use what’s here for your own benefit. The day it’s no longer a tool is when you become food for people higher up the ladder. Is that what you want? Is that what I want?

So how to listen to your gut through all the fluff?

Start by blocking out the noise. Like, literally, physically.

This can be done with temporary blockages of apps. Don’t trick yourself into temptation; Actually take the app off… Log out. Leave your phone at home.

Part of my self reclamation process has been to go for daily solo walks. Sometimes they last ten minutes, sometimes an hour. The purpose is solitude. To be alone and away from the noise to let yourself tune inwards and see things clearer again.

I frequently bring my notebook and a pen. Because ultimately when we start moving our asses the mind will quickly follow suit. Write what’s flowing. Don’t edit. Let the mind tap into the forgotten voice you’ve got lingering deep in your gut all along.

The best part about the gut feeling is that it’s always here lurking.

It’s not a finite resource that one day goes away. It hides for periods, sometimes a day sometimes a year or a decade. But it can always be lured back if we give it space and learn how to listen to it again.

So what am I really saying here?

I don’t say to stop use social media if it serves you. However, I am saying that the usage must be scrutinised and that includes usage of Substack, which increasingly positions itself as a social platform (oh, and it’s free to use).

Steps I’m taking to reclaim my legacy is that I’ll start build out my own website for Follow Your Gut. I won’t do it today, probably not tomorrow either because I have other more urgent projects going on. But the past couple months, dozens of solo walks and journalling have made the path clearer; Build a home to fall back on and give yourself an anchor before you drift too far away.

Thank you for reading!

Have you experienced Platform-drift before? And how did you respond to it?

Sending you love and GUTS to do what your gut tells you.
Elin, x

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