Back in June 2025, I started posting guitar reels on Instagram. Faceless guitar accounts were suddenly blowing up, and I wanted to try my hand. Until then, I’d only used Instagram to chat with friends and watch cat videos.
At first, it felt amazing. I posted once every two weeks, and the positive feedback fueled me. Within a few weeks, one of my videos hit 100K views. I was on cloud nine; my confidence soared. And that’s when things started to go downhill.
I first touched a guitar in 6th grade. I never truly enjoyed it, mostly because of a terrible teacher. Technically brilliant, but as a teacher? Not so much. Bad experiences made me quit, and now, just as I was rekindling my love for the instrument, another bad decision nearly made me quit again.
My monkey brain started equating views, likes, and shares with my worth. I measured myself by metrics, and that was a big mistake.
It took several weeks away from Instagram to realize my skills weren’t as bad as I thought. But the numbers had made me believe otherwise. The pressure to maintain a streak, so my reels wouldn’t fade, cheapened my art. What had once been an outlet for emotion and expression suddenly felt like a chore.
I’m learning again that art isn’t a scoreboard. It’s messy, imperfect, and mine. And that has to be enough.