MY NEWEST CHALLENGE

Social media. I think we all have a love/hate relationship with it. On the one hand we can keep in touch with distant loved ones, learn pretty much anything we want to, and share our creative skills with anyone who wants to see them. On the other hand, we can easily become over-influenced by things we don’t truly want, compare our lives to those we see online, and waste our time doom-scrolling. Let me be clear here, I don’t believe that social media is some massive boss-battle monster. But I do believe it’s been impacting my own life in a lot of negative ways because of how I chose to use it.

That’s why I’m changing things up. For the month of January, I’m going Social Media-Free. Well… kind of. As a small business owner who creates social media content and markets my work mainly through social media, I can’t simply QUIT entirely. But I can set boundaries. Here are the rules and regulations I’ve given myself for my media-free challenge:

-Cutting out all personal social media (which isn’t all that hard as I don’t have many personal social media accounts 😅)

-No Instagram or Facebook other than sharing a couple of stories and posts promoting my print pre-order sale at the beginning of the month.

-I can only use YouTube for music (because music is a MUST for me) and for specific videos (ex. I specifically searched for and watched a shape design video today as I was working on a new character design). But I’m not allowed to scroll through the home page or watch the new videos that pop up in my subscriptions page; they will still be there after January.

- No checking my email on my phone. Okay, this one isn’t EXACTLY social media, but it’s still an issue for me. The number of times I check my email throughout my day while I’m having lunch, lounging on the couch in the evening, or when I should be working on a project… it’s WILD. Seriously, no one needs to check their email this much. 😅

-I can only use Pinterest for specific reference searches (same as the YouTube thing). No more scrolling through the feed and losing hours in the process.

So, there are several rules and regulations, but what’s the REASON? What’s the INTENTION here? There are a few.

1. Stop wasting time. Truly, social media is such a huge time-sink for me. It keeps me from creating more art, spending time with loved ones, and living my life outside of my phone.

2. Going off of the first reason, I want to spend more time CREATING. I have a lot of fun, somewhat big projects I want to work on this year, and I want to put my full effort into them. For example, this month I set a new Nurture intention for myself: To have daily character design sketchbook conversations (more on that another time) and to fill 20 pages in my messy sketchbook in the month of January to nurture my character design skills and show up consistently for my creativity.

3. Less mental pollution. Most detrimental, social media is a burden on my headspace. I get very easily overwhelmed online. Overwhelmed by all the information, all the politics, all the influencing, all the art styles. My brain is already quite a loud place without the help of social media.

As I’m writing this newsletter, I’m a few days into this challenge, and I’m already loving the benefits of it. I’ve had LOADS more time to create, more time to spend with my family (hurray for working on puzzles during the icky winter weather!), and my head has felt much clearer. I can work on my own projects and ideas and trust my own creative intuition without the overload of other artists’ input that I tend to take in online.

I’d love to hear if you have any goals or challenges you’re embarking on this month!