The best thing I've done for my sanity this year...

...that might bring you some relief as well. Plus a book suggestion from me and a call for you to add yours.

This promises to be a week full of agita: There are the drywallers who will continue to dust up the house. And Finn-the-dog who will go in for his second surgery in the past four weeks. (How does a dog moving super slowly and still in a cone from surgery #1 pull an ACL so badly he requires surgery #2??)

Then there’s going to be two weeks of keeping said dog from playing with his sisters as his leg recovers. We could (of course!) use a crate for this job, but why crate when you can instead set up a babysitting schedule and keep your best buddy on a leash and at your side twenty-four seven? For two weeks.🤦🏻‍♀️ (Yes, I’m starting to rethink the crate thing.)

All told, this week promises to be a very un-fun conclusion to what has been a fairly un-fun month. Did I mention we’re still dealing with the after effects of Helene, the hurricane that won’t go away? We may have (finally) found someone who can extract tree carcasses from the woods without destroying the rhododendron groves. This would be a relief… if only he would just show up when he says he’s going to be here.

Do I sound stressed and overwhelmed? Yes? Excellent! That means I’ve gotten good at expressing tone in my writing (I’ll take a win wherever I can get one, thank you).

In the midst of all this crazy, there is one very bright light on this week’s horizon: this is the week I (finally!) leave Instagram.

For those of you who use Instagram socially, not professionally, it may seem like an innocuous app. Let me assure you, it is not.

In December, I took my usual two week break, going dark from winter solstice to New Year’s day— no email, no social media, no weekly phone calls with my assistant, Julie. When January rolled around, I got back to emails and business meetings but carried on quite nicely without Instagram. I had removed the app from my phone’s home screen for the holidays. Not gonna lie, for a couple of days my finger hovered uselessly above the spot where the app used to sit. But after a few days of phantom swiping, a miraculous thing happened:

I forgot about Instagram.

It wasn’t just that the compulsion to open the app went away (and it was a compulsion: I'd sometimes close the app and open it up again without even realizing what I was doing), it was that Instagram stopped taking up brain space. I didn’t think about it. I didn’t talk about the random things I’d read there. I didn’t worry about the stupid algorithm and whether I was attracting enough followers to satisfy the voracious appetites of the publishing world.

As my nervous system started to unwind, I found I could read for longer periods of time. Remember that? Sitting with a book for hours on end? Yeah, I can do that again now: I can relax into a story without picking up my phone every seven minutes. And now that I’m not constantly scanning the screen, I’ve realized how perpetually distracted I was… for the past decade. Oiy.

But it wasn’t just the distraction. Over the years, as Instagram grew and changed, I had begun to feel complicit in a business model that felt more than a little gross. I knew I was willingly participating in a system that exploited artists, intentionally promoted false narratives (the algorithm loves sensationalism more than truth), and made small business owners chase an ever moving target to try to converse with their customers. Instagram accounts would scream at me about capitalism and the patriarchy while supporting both by creating content for Zuck… simply by posting.

But I didn’t feel like I could just disappear from the app: when I got each of my book deals, the publishers based their decisions to work with me on my social media numbers. My contracts explicitly required me to be involved with promotion and, in the publishing world, that means social media. I had a deck coming out in early February (which you can check out here) so felt obliged to my publishing team to stay on Instagram, if only to do a post or two upon the deck’s arrival.

Now that deck is out in the world and I have no more pending book contracts. I’m free.

I’m using my freedom to reclaim not just my sanity, but my center. Who am I when not being yanked hither and yon by the algorithm? It’s easy to think we’re too grounded to be influenced by an app, that we can go on social media and just visit with friends….

But is that really true? Can you honestly claim to have never bought anything you saw on social media? I know I’ve bought cosmetics I rarely use (because I rarely use cosmetics, so really, what was I thinking?) and shirts from a brand that ended up going out of business before the shirts were delivered.

And if that was the extent of it, I’d say so be it, that those experiences mirror my “real world” experiences. That I’ve walked into bricks-and-mortar stores and purchased things I didn’t really need because the store was cute or I wanted to support the owner. That I’ve gotten a sweater that ended up not fitting well or falling apart. Of course I try to avoid it, but there will always be a little waste in my purchases and I’m okay with that.

But what I’m not okay with is having my thoughts manipulated. I’ve spent hours re-researching things I’d already looked into because some IG smooth talker had a better supplement or weight loss plan or yoga program. I’ve spent hours trying to figure out if photos of atrocities were real or faked, if political “news” was accurate, if weather news was overblown.

I’ve also discovered recipes and photos of Icelandic horses and a tarot deck I love. I’ve met some fascinating people and discovered some great brands like True Botanicals which I wrote about last week.

But even a broken clock is right twice a day.

On the whole, scrolling is not a grounding, sanity inducing experience. I might gain a lot of ideas and information on Instagram, but it’s usually ideas and information I didn’t need in that moment. It’s a distraction. Overall, I feel much better being gone.

So, here’s what I’m inviting you to do: list a book you’ve enjoyed recently in the comments below so that anyone looking for an incentive to use IG or FB or TikTok a little less can be enticed by a good read. By knowing that, with a little less app, they’ll be able to sink into the story a little more. List a book— preferably something that’s a recent read— and add a few sentences about it.

I’ll start: Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries is so much fun. Imagine Jane Austin writing about a curmudgeonly professor who lives in a world where faeries exist. Plus, if you like the first, there’s two more books in the series… which I’ll be reading while I babysit Finn-dog after his ACL surgery.

Speaking of reading, for those of you who are staying on with How to Write a Novel, next week I will be posting the opening scenes from my book! I’m a bit nervous, so be gentle with me.

xx Maia

P.S. If you’re thinking hold on, Substack is social media! I agree. But Substack works differently. On other apps, the algorithm chooses which of your followers sees your post. So, in the background, all us authors and small business owners are scurrying about trying to figure out how to hit some elusive, algorithmic sweet spot. On Substack, when you sign up for my posts, you get my posts, right in your inbox every time.

Allow Letting Magic In to be your invitation to rediscover wonder, deepen your connection to the world around you, and awaken the magic that’s already within—grab your copy today and begin your own journey of becoming!