To understand my journey I’m taking you back to 2024. I was taking a career break and blogging had started to lose its shine for me so I opened up instagram again (side note, I’ve had my bookstagram account since March 2017) and decided to go all in. I spent 9 months posting here and on @books.witth.t before taking an extended break from my blog so that I could fully focus on instagram.
2025 I really found my groove, I was posting consistently and my insights were actually insane. My followers grew quicker than ever before. My views were something I could only have dreamed of. I was in full creative flow, and every time a post popped off, it validated that what I was doing was working. At one point I had 1m views in 30 days. The momentum kept building; by September I’d had multiple posts go viral, 1 even racking up over 1m views. It felt like all my hard work was paying off, I felt I was on my way to being a bookfluencer!
I ended up rebranding and renaming, saying goodbye to books and other pursuits and becoming books with T. It was not long after this that things started to shift. The pressure to post constantly became overwhelming. The negative comments started to rage bait me, everything I used to love started to feel like a burden, it all just stopped being joyful. By the time December/January rolled in, my creativity started to feel like an obligation.
The thing that no one tells you when your account gets popular is the quiet toll that takes, because while my insights soured so did the negative comments and general toxicity that leaks in from being misinterpreted/misunderstood.
One hot take and the pile ons and trolls come out and as much as I tried to shake those comments off, it just made me angrier and angrier. Constantly defending myself for having an opinion was exhausting. Looking back at this time it wasn’t a sudden shift, it happened slowly. For months I was excited and brimming with ideas for new content and then slowly that spark went out, then when I did create something the urge to post became non existent.
I took break after break during the first few months of 2026, in February I started posting on here again, desperately needing a quieter space and then finally in April I knew something had to give, so I’ve taken an extended step back from instagram. I took a few weeks away from creating content and let myself breath.
May arrived and I started brain storming new content, I didn’t miss IG but I did miss the creative side of things. I came up with some new weekly posts that could be easily integrated if I decided to go back. Then off campus came out last week, which I of course binged and then the urge to post came back. So I posted my thoughts and opinions on instagram and within 24hours I remembered why I stopped because having a difference of opinion on Instagram is not always received in the way you intend it to. I’ve learned the hard way that instagram and tiktok thrives on outrage, even a soft take can be taken and twisted.
So yes I thought I’d achieved what I wanted on instagram, I thought virality equaled success but in the end it cost me my drive and creativity and the performance culture of instagram slowly eroded my passion for sharing my thoughts and love of reading. That post about Off Campus last week just reaffirmed for me that bookstagram maybe isn’t what I need anymore and I’m a bit sad about it. Although I can’t lay all the blame on social media, I also changed.
I realised that I am not under any obligation to please people with my opinion and my worth is not tied to an algorithm that feeds on chaos.
Books & Other Pursuits 