Social media is considered “the” place to share your work on the internet, right? This is partly because nearly everyone uses social media (making it, quite literally, the biggest and farthest-reaching “social network”) and partly because it’s “free” …as long as you’re willing to sacrifice your time to the algorithm and some personal information for big-spending advertisers.

But marketing my work on social media has never worked for me. Not for my money-making work and not for my mind/body/soul.

And here’s why.

Following my withdrawal from graduate school, I received an email from a professor that said:

“[I hope that you can] ‘be like water’ and find ways around the barriers to graduate education.”

It’s taken me a bit to understand why these words feel frustrating. Because his intention, I think, was encouragement and optimism.

So why do I feel conflicted?

It’s this implication that I can, and should regularly, move over/under/between/around barriers that serve no purpose but to keep me out (and maybe, to prioritize profit).

It’s so often accepted, that I nearly accepted it myself.