Why I Post Art Even Though I Hate Making Reels
- suzannealyse
- Aug 2
- 2 min read
I'll say it plainly: I am not good at Reels. Filming myself feels awkward. Editing feels like a chore. Every time I sit down to make one, I can think of ten other things I'd rather be doing — priming a canvas, hunting through a bin of old paper, anything that isn't staring at my own face on a screen.
So why do I keep doing it?
Because the alternative is worse. The alternative is art that sits in a closet, work nobody sees, a story that stays mine alone instead of maybe becoming someone else's too. I make collage because I believe every woman is born powerful, and I make it FOR women who are learning to trust that. That belief doesn't do much good if it never leaves my studio.
Here's what I've noticed scrolling Instagram at 11 p.m., avoiding my own homework: some of what goes viral is genuinely clever. A lot of it is just loud. Ridiculous stunts, manufactured drama, trends that have nothing to do with the person posting them — and they rack up views mine never will. I used to take that personally, like I was doing something wrong by not chasing it.
I'm not chasing it anymore. I've also stopped doing the thing a lot of small artist accounts do — jumping into those "like my post, I'll like yours" circles. You've probably seen them. A dozen artists trading likes with each other, no one actually buying anything, everyone congratulating themselves on "engagement" that goes nowhere. That's not community. That's just noise dressed up as support.
What I'm actually trying to do is smaller and slower than any of that: put a piece of art in front of someone and hope it lands. Hope she sees it and thinks about the version of herself that got quiet when it wasn't safe to be loud. Hope she wants it on her wall as a reminder that she doesn't have to stay quiet anymore.
I started taking this seriously about a year ago. Social media came even more recently than that, and it is still, honestly, the part of this business I like least. But I keep showing up here anyway — one imperfect Reel, one honest caption at a time — because somewhere in that noisy feed is a woman who needed to see this today.
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