Thank you! I do think I've been in a better place lately compared to how I used to be...

Social media itself is tricky... I used to use Tumblr a lot and have a fairly small following, so I mostly used it for blogging and light venting- paragraphs and paragraphs, because I am very addicted to typing and rambling...

Social media is a scary thing, though... It gives me a pressure, one that doesn't weigh on me as much anymore, but is still definitely there. I don't care about gaining numbers, but losing numbers does weigh on my mind... Any time I vent and am in a bad place, I keep too close an eye on stuff like my follow numbers and watch as it usually goes down, and then use that as fuel to hate myself.. sometimes I'll check some mutuals to be like "please don't let me push them away these are cool people" but for the most part that never happens

Also, because I said all that, let me say- it's healthy to curate your feeds to what you want to see~ Block certain words I say, tell me if you want a specific tag for you to block specific posts from me, etc. Unfollow if you don't vibe with me or my stuff- Following isn't friendship, and there's plenty of cool people I don't follow either because I don't want to be overwhelmed by social media and following so many people I lose track of everything, or just because the stuff they post doesn't fully grab me, but I still think they're cool people y'know? So likewise, I think it's fair to unfollow me or anything, I know I post some fringe stuff after all.

For coping.. I think the best help for me was Discord communities, actually- I used to be mainly on Tumblr and stuff like Yume Nikki dev discords, which were nice, but also a bit stifling admittedly- I was still very much someone who had a lot of dark suppressed thoughts. Then vtubing happened and I joined a certain Picky Chanel's community and that I think was the jumpstart to improving my mental health... so many cool and creative people there, so many connections I was able to make and branch out from there... Bug School is very good and the people there really encouraged me to be more open about myself.

I have two more "venty" accounts- a locked Twitter that I mostly scream into the void in and say bad negative stuff and opinions on my mind I don't think other people should see (but still I let a few close people follow since they wanted to), and the other is basically a dedicated "vent about wetting/diapers" Twitter that did help me open up to sharing that kind of art more regularly, by the time Bluesky happened I basically feel comfortable posting that kind of art on main, for better or worse... I still worry it's too much for some people who follow me though and I still want to branch out and have more variety in my art, but at the very least I don't completely hate myself for drawing this stuff now. But maybe I should have an alt account on Bluesky.. but also I don't want to have a million accounts.... dilemmas..

But yeah, ultimately I do still vent on social media a lot for better or worse, I think the main reason is that I don't know how to DM people nor do I want to unload a burden onto people so I'd rather just speak into the void that is social media and let those who want to involve themselves do and those who want to ignore it ignore it without any pressure~