I Quit Instagram to Find Inner Peace, and Now I Just Stare at Walls

Here’s What Happened (And Why I’ll Probably Be Back in a Week)

Sitting across from my friend Val in a bustling Mexican restaurant, I crunched down on a tortilla chip, swallowed, and dropped the bomb.

“I quit Instagram.”

Val blinked. I pulled out my Quit app like it was my sobriety chip and slid it across the table. “I haven’t been on for 1 day, 35 minutes, and… hold on—22 seconds.”

She squealed. “If you go back, you owe me… uhh… an enchilada.”

“Fine,” I said, knowing full well that half-off enchilada night was every Wednesday.

Now, let’s get one thing straight: I wouldn’t call myself a phone addict. But if my screen time were a romantic relationship, it would be one of those will-they-won’t-they slow burns, where I swear I’m done, but somehow we keep finding our way back to each other. Like a toxic ex who DMs me “u up?” at 1 AM, the algorithm always knows how to reel me in.

And this is where the irony kicks in. As an actress, writer, and model, social media is basically a second job. The constant pressure to be seen, to feed the algorithm, to document my creativity for likes—it started feeling like I was less of an artist and more of a content factory.

I found myself in a loop:

• I had an idea.

• I thought about how it would perform online before I even made it.

• I made it anyway, but now it felt tainted—less like art, more like content.

• I posted it.

• I waited for the validation drip-feed of engagement.

• I felt weird.

• I repeated the cycle.

I was living with an audience in my head. And that’s the thing about being a creative in the digital age—your work no longer belongs to you alone. It belongs to the masses, the metrics, the invisible panel of judges refreshing their feeds.

I don’t want to create for an algorithm. I want to create for the sake of creating. I want to write stories that no one will read, paint things that will never be posted, dance in my kitchen without recording it for an aesthetic TikTok.

But here I am, writing this for Substack. Sharing my thoughts about not sharing things. Oh, the irony.

Will I last a week off Instagram? Maybe. Maybe not. But for now, I’ll sit here and finish my leftover enchiladas. No filters, no captions, no pressure.

Just me, existing. And, honestly, that’s enough.