Honor Yourself

For about three years now, since January 2017, I have posted nail art photos that I’ve done on Instagram. It was scary and strange, putting myself out there like that, but it was also something I really wanted to do. I knew my photos weren’t great quality and I only had a phone camera and some filters at my disposal, but I was still excited to get started. Yesterday, I got my 200th follower (thanks, Kim!) and it felt good to see that number. At least, it did. It really did. But then I began feeling self-conscious and slightly embarrassed for being so overjoyed about 200 followers. My inner voice said, “You’ve been at this for three years and you’re only now reaching 200 followers? That’s barely anything.” And then my inner inner voice replied, “Yeah, you’re right, that might not be a lot compared to other nail accounts out there, but this has never been about that, and it shouldn’t be.” (My inner voices apparently like to converse with each other while also talking about me in second person. I'm not weird, you're weird).

I witnessed a friend of mine that I met through social media go through a version of this. She was using some sort of app that kept an assessment of her account, and she discovered that she was losing an average of one or two followers a day. It was never consistent. Sometimes she’d lose three followers, the next day she’d gain one, the day after that nothing added or subtracted. Meanwhile she still had thousands of other followers who weren’t unfollowing. But it became about the numbers. She determined tricks to get the Instagram algorithm to work in her favor. She somehow figured out that by posting three days in a row and then taking a break on the fourth day and then repeating the process, she could get better engagement with each post. The other trick she used was to put a plethora of hashtags at the tail end of each post so that it would be noticed by other accounts, and that videos get more attention than posts. She’s not the only person doing this. For many, getting likes on social media is their livelihood. But I knew in watching all of this unfold for her that I did not want this for myself. If she does happen to read this, I do want her to know that I completely know where she is coming from, and she should absolutely do whatever she feels happiest doing. I’m not saying one approach is better than the other, it’s just not something that would work for me. I honestly don’t know what I would do if I woke up tomorrow to find that I had gained 800 more followers overnight. Even getting 50 more would probably freak me out. I would most likely become stressed out with the ambition to appeal to them so that they wouldn’t go away. I would want to make them happy, and in doing so I would stop paying attention to my own happiness. What I have now works perfectly for me. If my following stays at 200 for another three years I can be happy knowing that I have a small loyal fanbase behind me made up of friends that have gotten to know me a little more through the years. I am never going to hold myself to any schedule or any expectations with likes. The truth is, that joy I feel when I get a lot of likes is extremely short-lived, almost instantaneously there and gone. It’s superficial. It doesn’t feel real. I never want my posts to own me. This is a hobby that I do for me. My nails are my canvas and a creative outlet. For now I have no desire to do it for a living. I think everyone should have something they just do for themselves, the only agenda being their own enjoyment. My nail art is for me and for me alone. I love that other people like my stuff and their support means the world to me. But my own support should be my top priority. I need to honor all the reasons I started doing this in the first place. I need to honor myself.