I kinda quit Twitter after the inauguration. I still have an account and I still tweet about blog updates, but for the most part I stopped using it.
After the inauguration I found it harder and harder to be using. I felt like a lot of the things that I usually use Twitter for were totally irrelevant. I wasn't really sure why I was there and I felt silly about the things that I was tweeting about.
Everyone has these introspective, smart and hilarious tweets about the state of our country and here I was tweeting about a new painting, my dog or how I didn't like such-and-such about Etsy. You know, things that people used to tweet about before our country was taken over by a fascist, racist, sexist, asshole.
I tried to engage politically, but I felt like what I was saying was just what everyone else was saying only not as funny, smart or introspective. They were "yeah everything sucks" tweets and I just felt like I wasn't really contributing anything worthwhile. Also, most of the time, I felt like I was talking to myself and I got really self conscious about it. It was kind of depressing.
I also was entirely against a platform in which Trump freely used to accuse people of things that weren't true, to scare people and to call legitimate news organizations as fake. It made me so angry, I didn't want to support something that he loved to use. Not to mention the amount of hate, lies and misunderstanding that came from both parties. I found it all very upsetting.
I just didn't want to be a part of any of that.
I've been giving Twitter a lot of thought again. I'm understanding that as an independent artist, social media is a big part of networking and promotion. For me, Twitter was a good way to get my work seen. Since leaving Twitter my sales have gone way down and traffic to my Etsy shop has been only trickling in.
I'm also part of a small group of artists/illustrators who meet once a month to discuss the ins and outs of our work. We all want to start promoting our group, as well as each other individually. Part of that promoting is using Twitter and other various platforms. I want to fully participate in this, which in turn also means using twitter.
I think maybe I take social media too seriously. I need to let a lot of my hangups about it go. It used to be a fun way to communicate with people. I felt, in a way, like the people on Twitter were my co-workers. If I was having a bad day, or something weird happened to me, I would Tweet about it and people would chime in with their thoughts. It was fun. I didn't feel like I really worked alone.
So, that's how I'm going to approach it from now on. Yes, most of the time it feels like the world is going to implode on Twitter, and the way things are going, it might not be wrong. But, there are a lot of positive things about it too. Funny stories, fellow artists and of course cute animal pictures.
I'm still going to be blogging more than tweeting, but if you'd like to be one of my co-workers you can also find me here:
