my toxic situationship with instagram
a quiet voice in a loud world
Our relationship is toxic.
We’re not mutually exclusive.
They are dating many others.
Yet I stay up all night… stalking, lurking, creeping.
I beg for their attention.
To like me, see me, hear me.
But I’m treated like a side piece.
Bread-crumbing me.
Giving me no validation for my effort.
Led me to shouting my desires and not being heard at all. My desire for words of affection leaves my praise kink untickled.
Our relationship status is complicated.
We’ve had breakups over the years. But who’s to blame them, I was pretending to be someone else. Had identity shifts that were unclear and expected to be accepted. Pushing all these deep topics on our recurrent first date. Okay I might have come on too strong.
Behaving hot and cold. Being intensely passionate then flat out ghosting for months. Slyly sliding back in for a quickie, expecting them to fall back in love with me. Then fove affairs for a few weeks then fully fleeing the country. Inconsistent. Not cute. Left me overthinking everything. And not trusting my voice.
I’m not talking about just the attention hogging, creative zapping doom scrolling.
I’m talking about the process of creating.
Craving to be one of those creators who peacefully plan, effortlessly create, and creatively free. Ultimately do not care about the metrics. Clearly overdue for an ego death of external validation.
I know I have to heal our relationship because for the foreseeable future we are unfortunately karmically tied. Attention is the currency of today. For the sake of future distribution to the goldfish. I must create visually.
And just like all sustainable relationships… this starts with being a good friend first. One who is fun, light, chill, and comfortable being fully myself. So reframing my relationship to be a place of safety, comfort, excitement, and passion. Able to safely say what’s on my mind, consistently.
consistent relationship
Which brings me to consistency. My word of the year. I feel resistant to monotony. Never been consistent sharing within one niche, which is an algorithm destroyer. What can I say my many curiosities take my interests everywhere.
I’m reaching a reflection point of my annual goals.
My 2025 layered goal:
Consistency* word of the year
Committed to being loud online.
Postponing self-judgement til next year.
Initially intended to encourage a weekly commitment to sharing my creations. Failed on every platform but substack.
I can proudly say I have been consistent with my Sunday newsletter. The anxiety of what to write has passed. Now I look forward to weekend writing. The cringe to read my own words aloud has faded. Sitting with the crickets of no one reading for months built my resilience. My commitment hasn’t waned. I’ve found comfort in reflecting, joy in writing, and sharing my voice.
Proving to myself that my relationship with my creational fire doesn’t have to be riddled with self-hate, self-whipping, and chains to an algorithm. Gone are the days where I need to be seen to be worthy to say anything. Being reassured that it is safe to be heard. Knowing that my story is just a reflection of other’s stories unsaid.
Yet on ig still strapped in the creative rollercoaster of being obsessed, then uninspired and pushed out content for the sake of “consistency.” Created choked content that feels forced. Left me with no reward and always feeling behind on my content calendar. More burnout, breakups, and ugly distaste for all those happily in relationship with IG.
On autopilot of social scanning.
Checking the stats, commenting, posting.
A routine day-to-day that destroys creativity.
Mundane scrolling that drains me.
Creating on empty rather than overflow.
Consistency feels surface level.
Consistent towards what?
Burntout. Searching for roots.
Consistency. Consistency. Consistency. Ugh. So overused. It feels hollow. Lost all meaning. You know when you say a word over and over until it just doesn’t look right, sound right, resonate as deeply. Just doesn’t hit the same. Lacking something more impactful, weighted, energizing, substance.
Lacking it.
Whatever it is feels detached from me.
My why.
And the why is always stickier.
I want to be in service of a larger mission. My why behind being consistent. Other than to prove to myself that I am consistent.
devotional relationship
Randomly, this word keeps showing up… Devotion.
I didn’t have an understanding of its depth before. Felt unreachable. Unattainable. Unrealistic. Growing up I heard it only in religious contexts. Faithfulness. Blind loyalty, bound by duty. Devoting myself to someone/something to me felt like self-sacrifice. Dogma which at the time was a hard pass. But now I have a deeper appreciation for the word devotion.
Devotion:
loyalty and love
love in action
enthusiasm for a person or activity
Reframing consistency to be a devotion to my becoming. Devoting my energy to the future me. Pouring my soul into the joy of creating. A small offering of day-to-day engagement in service to an old wiser me. This is not disciplined sacrifice. This is creative devotion. Creating from a lived emotive abundance. Capturing the in-the-moment intimate mess.
Devotion doesn’t leave space for limiting self talk: I can’t, I shouldn’t, I could never.
These small things are just hurdles in the mission towards my vision. Makes the challenges more like a mini side quest rather than an inner war.
Leaving only space for I must create.
I’m unsubscribing to messages that cage my potential. My becoming is my own journey. No one, not even me can dictate who I can’t become. I can learn anything, become anyone if I am committed.
So my devotional why is to create to remember. Collecting patterns and memories like wild flower seeds to plant, not knowing what they might bloom. Intentionally growing slowly are my roots, my values. A deeper path of soul integrity that is diligently earned.
Self-devotion feels more rooted in my vision. Creating not to prove, but to generously give. Creating just flows through me. I am here to serve beauty, wisdom, and pleasure. To create with no obligation, just joy.
I respect myself enough not to cave. Holding myself accountable to the mission. Committing my effort to becoming someone who is slow-burn growing and resilient to turbulent criticisms. Both inner and outer.
In this way, devotion is self-love. Commitment to me.
devotion / consistency
Same intention deeper commitment to slow growth.
being loud is not on brand
I am a creator. An artist at heart.
But I struggle with creating ADHD content for goldfish.
Creating long format content is where my heart is free to feel. Because I have the space to share from stillness. Being loud online adds unnecessary pressure. Just out of character.
Feels like speaking out of turn rather than my natural voice, which is quiet, clear, deep. Double dutch timing is not sustainable. Choosing to speak when the moment is ripe because my confidence whispers. My magnetism and joy of creating comes from sharing long lasting streams of my subconscious on opt in platforms. Rather than feed based boob-tube, click-bait, matrix level indoctrination. A perspective that sucks the soul out my of creation.
Creating 20s videos are the bane of my existence. Not enough time to say really anything deeply meaningful. Pressure to say it quickly out fear of being passed by. My short form content always feels stiff, hollow, forced, or out of context. Clearly performative. Yet, short form content is a necessary evil in our social stratosphere. Top of funnel is key to growth.
I get the ick from my own over-thinking. Spending days of depleting my energy just from the thought of creating loudly for ig. Mind filled with hacks, hooks, loud ways of garnering attention just for the sake of saying nothing yet always selling something. I set goals from a place of needing to prove myself, sell my soul rather than say something interesting.
Clearly light-hearted meaning can be done. I’ve saved them. I am just over-complicating our relationships. I am the problem. Calls for a breakup with my attitude and approach.
Being loud is not on brand for me. The pressure to speak up loudly is a major limiting factor that gives me anxiety. Growing up in a family of loud fast talkers, a quiet voice gets overpowered.
My process begs to be different than the dogma… to be loud is to be heard. My power comes from whispering when its my time. In the quiet stillness of introspection is a place of fruitfulness. I tell myself, raw and ready is better than perfect and paralyzed. Nurturing my creative fire looks like speaking after silence. This is my key to creative freedom.
rituals for short format
My creativity is not finite. It’s time to evolve.
Being a creative soul who is proudly type B. I’m an intrinsic doer, curious explorer, and relatively wild. Adaptability is my strength. I tend to resist structure but secretly I crave it. So as a devotional act, I’m creating a structure that is flexible, energizing, and full of play. Creating from peace and presence rather than trends and metrics.
In an attempt to psychologically trick my brain into forming a healthy relationship with short form content. I’m channeling my obsessive intensity into creative rituals that fuel, awaken, and still my mind. No noise. No scrolling to get inspired. Logging off to tune back in. Deleting my instagram off my phone to minimize doom scrolling and only occasionally viewing on my laptop.
Years ago I didn’t commit to creating, lacking courage to create imperfectly. I don’t want to be in the same place years from now. Turning my service to create into a process that is sacred, transformative, slow-growth, whispers. Reminding myself that nothing is built overnight especially my becoming.
I’m planing seeds now. For the future tree to bare fruit. I can not expect to eat the apple tomorrow. It takes 6 to 10 years for an apple seed to bare fruit.
Devotional discipline fuels me. Creative days that are designed for devotion, not depletion. Creating with meaning. Giving myself a hypnotized level of devotion to my personal story. Stillness and silence is my strategy now. Ig as a canvas for my presence, purity of thought. Simply an extension of my inner world, not an escape from it.
I know now my worth is internal. My value does not shrink when unrecognized it expands because I am devoted to myself. I need to be in service of me, my joy. Serving beauty, wisdom, pleasure, and light to others.
My 2025 new goal:
ConsistencyDevotion* word of the year
Committed to beingloudpresent & playful online.
Postponing self-judgementtil next yearforever.
Instagram is my beach club
Gaslighting myself into treating ig like a tool. Personal curation of my beach club life even overworking in a city. This is my vibe.
In my theta wave sleep state, I hypnotize my new relationship goal with a smile to really feel the joy of creation…
Instagram is my temple.
so twisted to be honoring a superficial platform, but bare with me.
Treating my relationship with instagram as an alter. Coming with an offering to place at the foot of my becoming. Rather than the approval of others, it is an archive of my deepening reverence and commitment to my abundant creativity. Devoted to create, express, share moments of emoting. Keeping it light, joyful, personal, raw, real, relentlessly me.
Sharing the moments where I am first to feel. First to go where others are afraid to. Being seen for having courage rather than perfectly performing. Reframing my relationship to be a place of safety, comfort, excitement, passion, and fun. Safe to say what’s on my mind.
Just like with substack over-time, creating will become effortless, overthinking will quiet, and expectations melt. This will happen the moment I stop trying so hard.
Beyond the mind. Beyond tension filled duality of what’s me and not me. I am not here to measure my worth based on superficial metrics. Dissolving the outer edges of my ego into a fluid essence. Killing external validation as my engine.
My credo is to live truthfully, even when it’s uncomfortable. My emotional truth is universal. My voice is more powerful when its personal. The more I show up as myself, the more abundance I know I receive.
Ritually I’ll return to reading this credo to remind myself in the expected low moments to revive my creative soul. But for now, I’m creating from quiet joy. Recovering lost files in my drafts. Sharing stories of intimate connection, innocent discoveries, and curious adventures. Follow along on my journey.😊@alex_____sax
