The real work of supporting writers with Instagram is turning out to be something unexpected
How it started in 2017, and where I find myself now
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This month marks two years since I received the news no freelancer ever wants to hear: sorry, we love working with you, but we have to cut your hours.
I’ve written before about how, once the initial panic subsided, that moment forced me to reconsider what I actually wanted from my work:
But it’s a long time since I’ve thought back to the very beginning, to early 2016 when I was pushed out of my teaching career a year after my second child was born (in what you’ll read further down, I say I ‘quit’ - for brevity, convenience, out of shame, I’m not sure why. The truth was I never planned to leave but staying was made untenable by the actions of others); when my entire sense of who I was as a person, already creaking from the onslaught of early motherhood in the days when the word matrescence had not yet entered mainstream discourse, crumbled into dust.
Then, the other day, out of the blue,
(the founder of Doing It For The Kids, the BEST freelancer community) sent me a post that I wrote for her blog just as I was getting ready to launch myself into the world as a Social Media Manager for small businesses in early 2017.Reading it, I was struck by the casual jauntiness of my tone, which I think I employed to pretend I was fine when I was actually a mess of angst and uncertainty. I was also reminded how vulnerable I had been to the seductive pull of social media; how hard-won the boundaries and systems and guardrails that guide my use of Instagram today, are.
We often say in writing that ‘nothing is ever wasted’ - that character or scene you cut will reappear somewhere else; with every draft of your manuscript you get the chance to layer in more nuance, or description, or action - whatever it is it needs. And it seems to me the same is true in other arenas.
When I come to my work now as an Instagram educator and guide for writers and authors, I am bringing with me my experience, my instincts, my technical expertise, and strategic and creative thinking, but also I’m bringing a deep understanding of the ways in which unfettered social media use can seep into your life and eat away at everything good.
Working as a social media manager for businesses, running multiple accounts at once, for almost 7 years, meant I had to learn how to manage the pull of my phone as a matter of survival.
I had to figure out how not to be sucked into every rabbit hole that presented itself to me; how to separate the value of what I was doing from the number of likes and followers being generated by a post. I had to learn to look at Instagram purely as a tool, rather than a source of validation... or break.
And as my work evolves it is becoming clear to me that it is these insights that many writers and authors often need from me, even if you don’t realise it. At first, you might come for content ideas, planning tips, or advice about whether to post a reel or a carousel, but you leave with a greater sense of ease about, and understanding of, how you - as individuals - want to harness the opportunities Instagram offers while knowing when to let go.
That is the work I feel called to do. To show writers and authors that what you think Instagram is - gosh, what Instagram wants you to think it is - isn’t the only option.
It would be silly to suggest we can extract ourselves entirely from the tyranny of follower counts, views and likes - of course the platform makes its demands - but the door is wide open for you and me - us, together - to question, challenge, undermine, and ultimately find alternative ways to exist alongside those demands, so that you can share your art with the world.
Anyway, here’s the piece that kicked it all off, back in 2017
On Your Marks, Get Set… Oh SHIT!
It’s after midnight when I fumble into bed berating myself.
Stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result and I KNOW there’s a high chance of too much grumpiness for the good of anyone in the morning. I am the stupid.
Settling under the covers, I refresh my social media feeds one more time in case something really important has just happened at 1am on a Tuesday night — three minutes and 37 seconds after the last time I checked.
The Mr snorts and rolls over. A reminder that I definitely should be sleeping. He’ll be up in four and a half hours and another day will commence in which we only see each other unconscious.
How much sleep am I going to get?
I weigh up the odds of both children sleeping through the night. My calculations say a reasonable six hours — they both ate a lot of pasta and did plenty of running around today so they should be good for 7am. But then I remember sneezes and beginnings of a runny nose… or was that yesterday?
Congratulating myself on my improving levels of impulse control, I reach past my phone on the bedside table and turn off the light. My hand retreats towards the warmth under the duvet until an involuntary twitch takes over, picks up the phone and presses unlockunlockunlockUNLOCKFFS!!!
Goddammit, I have no restraint! He’s right, I’m addicted.
Sleep…
I miss being a teacher — I miss the kids, the Dunkerque spirit, being good at something measurable, and the presence of my trusty steed The Moral High Horse, because what I was doing mattered.
I don’t, however, miss having to smile and nod while behind exhausted eyes I screamed, ‘TEACHERS NEED THE HOLIDAYS OTHERWISE THEY WOULD ALL BE DEAD’, because everyone has been to school, so everyone has an opinion.
The fact is there is nowt as obscenely inaccurate as the saying, Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach — because teaching is effing hard.
Have you ever tried to socialise with a teacher during the week, during term time?
Chances are they’re high on anti-congestant, as a mutation of mega-virus does the rounds. Ask them to even have one glass of wine and be prepared to be apologetically knocked back. They quake at the risk of even the mildest wine-flu when their audience can sense weakness from five rows back, even through clouds of cherry Impulse and Lynx Excite.
Working in an inner-London comprehensive school was brilliant, fulfilling and gratitude-inducing. It was also exhausting and all-consuming so when, once I’d had my own children, my family’s circumstances meant that I was losing nearly five hours a day of time I would previously have spent working, the need to put my children first became heartbreakingly clear.
I couldn’t do anything well. I couldn’t keep up. I couldn’t continue. So I quit.
I’m now discovering that while those days are behind me, far from institutionalising me, they were the perfect preparation for what comes next.
Like an actual new baby, this new baby of training to be a social media manager sucks me dry of time, but it has also resulted in a rebirth, an opportunity.
But it’s not without its own complications.
My lack of formal childcare is already an issue. Spinning plates occasionally smash into barely controlled juggling balls, which then bounce off the nearest small person sending pieces spinning all over the place. I’m now tossing in some flaming batons and a marching band to keep time to. Should be interesting.
I know I’m likely to get frustrated and resentful when my work sits in fifth place behind the children’s needs, the Mr, his work and running the house. But at least it still sits in front of “me” in the list of priorities. And that’s totally fine…
I once typed an entire Skype conversation with a friend because the sound “wasn’t working”. I had my iPad on mute. Being operational in the digital world is going to test my tech-savvy-ness way past its breaking point.
Of course, I torment myself with a whole list of what ifs — What if people don’t pay on time or at all? What if I spend valuable time crafting a proposal only for the work to never materialise? What if there is no work?
What. If. I’m. SHIT?
Despite these worries though, I’m feeling nervous and apprehensive rather than heart-dropping despondency. Looking at this freelancing landscape from the other side of the fence where the grass is brown, dry, down-trodden and defeated, I am excited.
I’m not going to earn what I earned when I was teaching, but I will earn enough to take the pressure off.
I will be able to contribute financially to our household — something that is (rightly/wrongly/who cares) important to me.
I’ll be able to be the kind of mum I want to be, no longer making an impossible choice between prioritising the children I taught or my own.
I’ll be setting the kind of example I want for my children — that mummy works too; that hard work can build good things; that it is possible and important to feel the fear and do it anyway.
I’m grateful to the Mr for making this possible; to my children for making me question our status-quo and pushing me onto new and fertile ground; and to my previous life for preparing me for this leap.
So, feel my deep breath with me, because here goes.
On your marks, get set…
Oh shit.
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Oh soooo enjoyed reading this. ALL of this!
Good for you Nicola, career pivots take courage and energy, you're brilliant at what you do and we writers need you, I'm so glad you're here!