Back then, I was reluctant to claim the title because it felt like admitting that I was good at something would make me seem arrogant. Instead, I shared my creations first with my closest friends before gaining the courage to share them with my Instagram followers for 24 hours. It was all harmless at first: a little hard-earned praise for the countless hours I spent crafting my voice. That is, until the inevitable happened — I began hearing unkind words about the flowery ones I mistakenly shared with the wrong audience.
I learned then that art was inaccessible. Nobody wanted to read or write or make music and they didn’t want to see anyone else doing it either. Art was perfection and artists were real, published authors and musicians, not the 16-year-old girl writing journal entries in her room. So, I kept sharing my work. Deleting it. Reposting it. Checking to see who had viewed it and wondering what that one user thought. I found myself waiting for someone to validate that the things I created had value; that my deepest fears and darkest secrets would be seen as not only acceptable, but maybe even beautiful.
Regardless of whether I got that validation, somewhere along my journey, everyone decided to become an artist.
Now, making and sharing art is almost too easy. The advent of short-form content and the prioritization of quantity over quality creation has made art a lucrative process that earns you physical and social capital. All that creativity has turned to content and those who share it are seen as inspiring and brave. Suddenly, everyone wants to be a DJ.