How Instagram Made Me Hate My Own Sketchbooks

A Story About Burnout, Perfectionism, and Taking Art Back

Hi there!

There was a time when my sketchbook was a fun place and a private space where I could experiment, make mistakes, draw ugly things, try weird ideas, and just play. No pressure. No expectations. Just me, whatever media I wanted to use, and the page.

Then I decided to try and be a “content creator” on Instagram in late 2023 and it was the biggest mistake of my life.

At first, it was okay. I’d record and post a thing every now and then and it was kind of fun. But then I learned exactly how much the algorithm demanded in order to show my work to more people and “grow my audience” and I tried to keep up.

The demand was ridiculous. Not just finished art — but content. Reels, stories, carousels. Every. Single. Day. My sketchbook stopped being a sketchbook and started becoming a production set. Every time I sat down to draw, I had to set up a tripod and ring light, find the right angle and make sure my hand or head wasn’t blocking the camera (which is an extremely physically uncomfortable way to draw), double-check the lighting and worry about whether the footage would be “engaging” enough to get views.

It completely shattered the experience of drawing.

And even beyond the technical frustrations, there was this creeping pressure that every page needed to be aesthetic. Shareable. Perfect. Sketchbooks weren’t for experimenting anymore — they were portfolios or art galleries. If something looked bad, it didn’t feel like a learning moment; it felt like failure. Failure to feed the algorithm. Failure to stay “relevant”. Failure to be a "good" artist online. Failure to “grow my audience”.

So I stopped drawing in my sketchbooks. I couldn’t even look at them anymore. The joy of it was completely suffocated by the constant demand to perform. To package creativity into bite-sized, polished pieces for an audience that might scroll past it in less than a second.

I started to realize that I wasn’t the problem — the system was. Social media thrives on quantity, speed, and perfection. But art doesn’t. Creativity needs room to breathe, to be messy, to be private.

It scrambled my brain for nearly a year and a half until I recently made the decision to never go back to social media. I took down all my drawings and videos,never looked back and I have no regrets.

Lately, I’ve felt the itch to pick up my sketchbooks again — especially since I’ve got time to kill on train rides to school or during a painfully boring class. I started carrying a small sketchbook with me and just drawing whatever. Sometimes it’s drafting ideas for new covers, other times it’s random shit I find on Pinterest.

Either way, I’m relearning how to enjoy sketching whatever the hell I want. And for the first time in a while, I’m actually having fun with it. Will I ever post any of it on social media? Highly unlikely. But if something turns out decent (most of it doesn’t), maybe it’ll end up in a future artbook. Not that I’m thinking about that right now.

Right now, I’m just glad to be drawing for myself and putting a physical pen to physical paper again.

Thanks so much for reading and have a great weekend :)
-M