Back in August I announced I was taking a two week break from social media to “recharge”. The problem was I didn’t last five whole days away from social media and my phone. It wasn’t only the FOMO (fear of missing out) that drew me back in, but the fear if I stayed gone too long people would forget me and most importantly forget my art.

Over the last two years, I’ve put every bit of energy and effort into creating my art, developing my style and and finding my voice. I’ve pretty much taken zero time off from this pursuit while maintaining a full time job. Don’t get me wrong, I love being being on social media, but there is a piece of me that hates it too.

I’m on social media of course to show my art, my process, and I absolutely love being able to connect with people from all over the world. The problem is when I spend massive amounts of time on Instagram, I feel like I’m procrastinating from actually working on my art. At times I feel like all I’m doing is promoting myself and “growing my brand”. I actually hate that term. “BRAND”.  It sounds like I’m promoting a clothing line.  “New from the Jason Chambers fall collection.” See what I mean?

I also found myself making other excuses not to create. I would work on the business side of being an artist. Updating my website, inventory management, and all the other stuff that we artists either hate, suck at, or both.

Sometime ago I took advice from an artist friend of mine and he said, “ Jason don’t worry about selling art right now, concentrate on growing your audience. Once you have an audience the sales will happen virtually by themselves.” This advice turned out to be kind of true, but it also distracted me from my true passion in life. Creating art.

Over the period of a about a year I worked really hard. I spent forty plus hours a week on Instagram alone trying to grow an audience. You add in my Facebook business page, my constant website building and tweaking, Etsy, and email. That’s just the online side of things.  I did live exhibitions too. Because of this constant hustle, I did manage to sell quite a bit of my art and a few opportunities did come my way, but all this time on social media came with a price. I was absolutely miserable.

I’ve lost myself along this journey. This journey that was meant to be fun and positive and creative. I’ve forgotten why I create and for whom. I used to create for me, because of the way it made me feel while creating. It has always been my form of mediation. Some pray, some sit cross-legged and chant while burning incense. I draw. Now it feels like I’m only creating “content” for Instagram.

I’ve decided to change how I approach my time online. While I do love social media I have to limit the amount of time I spend on there. Instagram has made me a very unproductive artist. Besides it can’t be too healthy spending forty hours a week online. I think we’ve all had negative thoughts when we’ve spent too much time endlessly scrolling.

I’ve also decided to put a little more focus on my website and this blog, instead of dumping all of my efforts into Instagram. Social media platforms can turn out to be super unreliable. Apps are prone to just close up shop with no real warning at all. You then end up losing all the images you posted and all the people you connected with. Look at Vine or even more recently what’s going on with Tiktok. It happens. 

Also, unlike Instagram/ Facebook I own the rights to the content that I post on my site. I don’t have to worry about being shadow banned (It’s happened once) or have my account restricted (it’s happened multiple times).

With all that being said I will continue to be active on Instagram and my other social media accounts, but I may be a little slower to respond. Also I will be putting a lot of focus on my site and my blog.

I have three main goals  for venturing off in this direction:

1. I would love to have many of you check out and subscribe to my monthly blog posts as well as subscribe to my newsletter.

2. This is a way for me to regain some control over how my time is best spent online promoting myself and my art. 

3. And finally, but most importantly, to be able to interact and connect with the people that truly care about me, my art, and my artistic vision. (If you’re reading this far down, you’re one of them.)

I will post a new blog entry on the 15th of each month. I may even throw in a couple of extra bonus articles and interviews if time permits. I plan for the articles to vary between my art, my process, travel or maybe even about my life or funny stories. Truth be told I’m not really sure yet, but I’m excited. I really hope you join me.