Losing Followers, Gaining Friends

Two weeks into my daughter’s sixth-grade year, I find myself weaving into the rhythms of a new school community. At first, I said “yes” to helping here and there. But quickly, those yeses became something bigger: a way of finding my place.

This is a public school—our neighborhood school. The kids I meet in the hallways are the same ones my daughter will grow alongside in junior high. The parents I’m getting to know will be part of our lives for years.

Ollie waiting patiently for school to be dismissed

Volunteering has become less about filling roles and more about building relationships—showing up, contributing what I can, and continuing to root myself in this community.

I bring the skills I already carry with me. Years in communications means I can give flyers a consistent look and feel. My art practice means I can sit at a messy desk pulling prints, turning them into birthday bookmarks that the librarian can hand to each child. My love of noticing means I can remember the staff whose birthdays might otherwise slip by.

None of these things are extraordinary. They are simply mine to give—and giving them feels right.

Outside the school, my Ripple Station™ has taken on a life of its own. In just 19 days, 146 handmade tokens have been picked up. Neighbors stop by to talk, to ask questions, to share stories of where the tokens are going next. The station has become a gathering place, an invitation to kindness, a reminder that small gestures ripple farther than we know.

It is deeply gratifying. Each handmade piece, each conversation, each small celebration feels like it makes a real difference.

And when I think back to last year at this time, the contrast is striking.

The shift didn’t come overnight.

I deleted Instagram from my phone in November 2024, before a month-long family trip to New Zealand. That absence was revelatory. I realized how much more fully I could inhabit my days without the constant urge to share or scroll.

In January, I made it official: I announced I was leaving social media for good. I haven’t hit delete—my book comes out in 2026, and I know the publisher will want some presence—but I rarely post or engage.

I stripped my phone down to the bare minimum: no apps except mail, messages, calendar, and camera. My home screen is now empty. When I reach for it, there is nothing demanding my attention.

If I need to do anything online, it requires an intentional choice to sit at a computer. That pause, that extra step, has changed everything. It has given me back a sense of agency over how I use my time and where I place my attention.

If you want to try it, too, you’re welcome to start with my 5-day, 10-minute challenge of No Phone, Just Art.

Last August, I was entrenched in hustle. I was launching bespoke watercolor kits, fulfilling orders, filming reels, posting daily content to keep an online community fed. I had just signed my book contract, and every day felt like a sprint to keep up with an invisible finish line.

From the outside, it looked productive—even impressive. But inside, I was running on fumes. Burnout was not a threat in the distance; it was a reality creeping into every corner of my life.

Letting go came with a cost. I stopped selling the products that brought in steady income. I stepped away from the constant visibility that many would call “good marketing.” There has definitely been a financial impact.

But the deeper cost would have been staying in that cycle—continuing to trade my peace for productivity. What I’ve gained instead is presence, and a way of working that feels sustainable.

I continue to find myself covered in paint, my desk scattered with stencils, scissors, and scraps of paper. I spend my afternoons layering colors for bookmarks, planning ways to ensure a staff member’s birthday is remembered, or restocking the Ripple Station™ so that there is always something waiting for the next passerby.

I am able to enjoy watching my daughter bond with Scooby, an Arabian horse she rides once a week. I’ve marveled at her design and writing skills when she’s presented her Google Classroom slideshows and cheered her on as she learns to do swim strokes. I’m constantly amazed by her resilience, self-confidence and kindness.

I’m also meeting more people in our community—having coffee dates with women entrepreneurs I’ve only known in Zoom rooms, conversations with friends over butter chicken and chai, short painting siestas with women who’ve attended my online gatherings that I now call friends, Yin Yoga sessions with a somatic coach whose voice sounds like a soothing podcast.

My calendar is full, yes—but it is full of things that replenish me, not deplete me.

And the shift isn’t just in what I do with my hands. It’s in how I connect.

When I was steeped in the churn of social media, most interactions were quick taps—a heart, a comment, a share. Affirming, yes, but fleeting all the same. The kind of attention that’s gone in an instant, leaving you craving the next dopamine hit.

Now, what arrives are letters. Sometimes in the mail, mostly in the form of 8-10-paragraph emails.

A woman I met through Substack tells me about her mountain trail race at age sixty-three—while she shares about the challenges, the scrapes, the emergency “picnic table surgery,” she also shares her pride in accomplishing so much more than finishing a race.

Another writes about her puppy and his obsession with rainbow-striped “lesbian balls”—cat toys she stockpiles from the local pet store because they make him so happy.

And then there’s a note from a social media “retiree” reminding himself (and me) that a gathering of six people is still special, that unsubscribes are not a measure of worth, and that one real relationship is better than inflated “traffic.”

These exchanges are messy, human, alive. They carry grit, humor, tenderness. They hold stories about knees giving out, dogs chewing happily beside beds, the joy of hosting a small number of people in a virtual space.

They are not broadcast for likes; they are shared for connection. They are sacred. Precious. Ours to hold on to.

And I write back. One person to another.

This is the surprising gift of stepping away from the artificiality of algorithms. You discover that enoughness lives in the small.

• One neighbor picking up a token.

• One child holding a handmade bookmark.

• One letter in the inbox.

Each is whole in itself, not a data point in a “traffic graph.”

The Ripple Room and the Ripple Circle keep reminding me of this too: staying humble, grounded, and small is not a limitation. It’s a portal to something deeper. It’s where real relationships have space to grow, where ripples take root.

These days, I paint without documenting every step. I walk without headphones. I journal by hand with a fountain pen. I text sometimes, but more often I write emails or send letters. I post occasionally on my website—less performance, more catalog of thought. I send newsletters to people I’ve come to know as friends.

I feel unbound—not just from the algorithm, but from a culture that celebrates constant hustle. In its place, I am finding peace … and with it, the spaciousness to show up fully.

Enoughness, I’ve come to see, is not a solitary pursuit. It lives in the ripples we share as parents, neighbors, and community members, shaping the stories we write together.