Why I Stopped Writing {#TransparentTuesday}

On relationships, creativity, and getting my own stories back.

Hi friend,

I recently decided to start writing and posting on Instagram again!

It’s been a verrry long time since I posted regularly on social media… and even longer since I used it as a platform for sharing my own personal stories and musings.

There are many layered reasons why I stopped sharing and posting like I used to, a big one being the shift that Instagram went through when TikTok skyrocketed in popularity a few years ago, when the algorithms completely changed. 

I had always loved the simplicity of a photo and written caption that Instagram offered, but in a push to stay relevant, the algorithm started making those kinds of posts disappear completely so that everyone would switch to a “tiktokkier” style of short video content. 

I tried to ride that wave for a while, looking for an authentic way into the new formatting, but I never found it. I turned my written captions into carousel images. I added music to quotes. I made videos pointing at words in the air. I tried to follow trends, using generic “sounds” to make lifeless “skits” about my niche. 

I found these attempts profoundly unsatisfying. Making this kind of content wasn’t fun or joyful, it didn’t feel like authentic self-expression, and it didn’t foster interesting thoughts. 

Plus—if the goal was to build my business—it didn’t even work. 

Nobody was seeing my content anymore. Even the people who had followed me in order to be shown my content were no longer able to see it, which fostered feelings of powerlessness and despair for a lot of us whose businesses had been built through organic social media growth. 

I stopped seeing content from the creators whose work I had been enjoying for years anymore, either, and there was nothing I could do about it. My feed was suddenly filled with strangers and ads, my audience was suddenly gone, and the whole vibe shifted from “community” to “competition.”

I wanted to promote my business and keep my social media-to-client funnel alive, but writing and sharing personal stories was no longer a viable option for doing so, and my attempts to participate in trends fell flat. So I just kinda… let the whole thing fade. 

But the other big reason I stopped writing and posting is because I was in a relationship that was struggling, and I felt like I couldn’t write about it. 

As a writer and content creator, I’ve always taken deeply personal and intimate stories from my own life, and made them public. 

When I was single, I was willing to write openly about my sex and dating life, because I was able to do so in a more anonymous way that never violated someone else’s privacy. 

But by choosing to share my partner’s identity with you all, I made it almost impossible to talk about my sex and dating life, relationship struggles, or frankly almost anything else going on in my life, without violating his privacy.

That really sucked, because there was a lot going on in my inner world that I would have loved to write about, had it not felt complicated, inappropriate, or unethical.

I would have loved to process some of my couple’s therapy experiences, for example, and the lessons I was learning. But doing so would have inevitably either made me look like a villain, made him look like a villain, or made both of us look like villains. 

I would have loved to share the complicated questions I was asking myself about identity, personality, and mental health—most of which essentially boiled down to the question of “how much can a person actually change?”—but I couldn’t really do that without mentioning the specific ways in which each of us were trying to change ourselves and each other, in order to make the relationship work. 

I would have loved to write about how angry I was sometimes, and how hurt, and how ashamed, and how desperate. But I couldn’t tell those stories without contextualizing them in ways I felt unable to do.

It was like my stories were no longer mine to freely give, because I had tied them to someone else, and because there were now “two sides” to every story, instead of only one. 

There were still things I could share, of course, and ways of sharing that were safe and appropriate. But for me, the presence of those restrictions and rules felt like putting a wheel clamp lock on the tires of my creativity, which made it feel impossible to think in the way that I need to think, if I want to be able to write. 

And so the writing itself dried up.

I am now single again though, which means that all of my stories belong to myself again, and I no longer need to take another side into account when telling them.

This is the way I think it should be, if I’m being honest. A memoirist doesn’t have to recount what the other people in the story would say about it, even though they probably see things completely differently, and as readers, we understand that we’re only getting “one side of the story.”

Anyway, with the wheel clamp lock removed, I’ve been thinking like a writer again, and finding myself wanting to return to social media. 

I miss the way having a platform to write and share encouraged me to process and integrate my life in real time through a beautiful lens, because my mind was constantly stitching experiences together, and asking me what I thought was valuable or interesting about them.

I want that feeling back again, I think. I don’t know if social media will still be the right forum for it, but I’m open to exploring and seeing how it feels and where it takes me. 

So far I’ve only posted a few random musings about friendship, hair, and lifting weights. But each time, the internal shift from “I’ll just quickly jot down this idea” to “I have permission to really flesh this out” has felt luxurious. 

Like I was being spoiled, or given a special treat. Like exploring and sharing my own inner world was somehow too indulgent to do on a random Tuesday.

Which is silly, of course, since there is nothing actually stopping me from doing this. I don’t need permission to start again, and I don’t believe in rationing pleasure or joy. 

So as of right now, the plan is this: 

• I will start taking more pictures of myself (or other things I think are interesting) day to day again, to pair with my writings. 

• I will sit down to flesh out those story-stitching ideas whenever they flit across my mind. 

• I will post in this old-school way—a photo and a caption—on Instagram only, so that I don’t need to consider translating my content into any other format. 

• I will not take trends into account, or do anything that you’re “supposed to do” to get engagement. 

• I will not try to teach, coach, heal, or support my audience. I will (for now) just write; I will share, muse, consider, unpack, and explore… because the first one feels like work, and the second one feels like rest. 

Maybe this whole plan will be a bust and come to nothing, and that’s completely fine. 

Maybe I’ll get bored again, or run out of ideas, or decide that actually I prefer a bit more privacy. 

But honestly just thinking about it makes me feel excited, and that matters. 

Big hug,

Jessi

PS I’m thinking about restructuring the way I offer coaching, too, so I’m curious—what would need to be true for you to sign up for coaching with me?