79: Ep5: Nobody Told Me No One Is Watching That Closely on Instagram

🌟 Why You Think Everyone's Watching You (And They're Not)

You have a post sitting in your drafts right now. You've read it ten times. It feels a little too honest, a little too much, a little too you. So it stays a draft, because you're convinced the second you hit publish, everyone in your world is going to see it and decide something about you.

I want to save you the years it took me to learn this. Nobody is watching you as closely as you think. Not because you're not worth watching. Because everyone else is far too busy watching themselves.

I learned this lesson twice in my life, in two very different rooms, almost twenty years apart. The first time, I was brand new to something that terrified me. The second time, I had built a business with over 125,000 people following along, and the fear had not gone anywhere. It had just changed shape.

If you have ever assumed you're the main character in everyone else's story (or worse, the villain), this one's for you. This is episode five of six in my summer series, so if you haven't caught the first four yet, go back and start there.

💡 The Gym Where I Thought Everyone Was Watching Me

It's 2008. I just moved to a new city and didn't know a single soul besides my sister and her husband. I joined a CrossFit gym, which in hindsight is a wild choice for someone with my personality, because CrossFit gyms have a very specific culture. Everyone works out together. Everyone can see everyone. Your reps go up on a whiteboard for the whole room to read.

I was 34, brand new to it, and before that my workout experience was spin classes and the occasional HIIT class. I was convinced every single person in that gym was watching me. Judging my form. Judging the weight on my bar. Clocking exactly how slow I was moving through a set. I spent more energy managing an audience that existed only in my head than I spent actually working out.

Then, gradually, I noticed something. Nobody was watching me. Every person in that room was completely consumed by their own workout, their own numbers, their own fear of finishing last. There was no bandwidth left over for me, quietly hiding in the corner I'd chosen for myself.

(My now husband was watching me a little. He coached there. That's how we met.)

That realization didn't just change how I felt at the gym. It changed how I understood being watched at all. We walk around convinced we're the main character in everyone else's story. We're barely a supporting role. Most people are so deep in their own heads, their own insecurities, they don't have room left to fully register ours.

That lesson applied to a barbell in 2008. It applies to your Instagram grid right now.

🎯 The Tax You Pay for Being Findable

Fast forward. I'm five and a half years into building The Creative Bodega. Over 125,000 people follow along. Real community, real business, and I still feel the fear. It hasn't gone away. It's evolved into something different.

What nobody tells you about standing out is this: the more you do it, the more people you attract who want to knock you back down. The more specific your point of view gets, the more likely someone disagrees with it publicly. The more personality you bring to your content, the more likely someone finds it annoying. Visibility is a tax, and the tax gets steeper the more visible you become.

I want to be honest about this part. It gets to me every time. When someone leaves a mean comment, or decides arguing with me in my DMs is their mission for the day, it stings. I am envious of the women who can read something nasty and shrug it off without it touching them. I study them. I want their mentality so badly. I don't think I will ever fully get there, and I don't think that's my personality, and that's fine.

😅 The Reel That Cost Me (And Paid Me)

A few weeks ago I posted a reel about how tired I was of the "talking head reels are dead" discourse. I called it, in my own words, effing stupid. I went off a little. I was having a moment and I said it out loud, publicly.

That reel brought in over 250 new followers. More than I'd gained in months from a single post. It also brought in a wave of people calling me insecure, jealous, whatever word they reached for that day. Both things happened from the exact same 60 seconds of video.

You cannot have one without the other. The woman who watched that reel and wanted to knock me down exists. So does the woman who watched it and said, "thank you for finally saying that." I found her. That's the whole point.

The more specific, real, and opinionated you get, the more polarizing you become, and polarizing is not a bad word. It means you stand for something. It means you stopped hiding behind content designed to offend nobody, which is also content designed to connect with nobody.

🌵 Why This Actually Matters For Your Business

This is not just a feelings lesson. It's a content strategy lesson. Beige content, the stuff written to offend absolutely nobody, also connects with absolutely nobody. If your content strategy is built entirely around not upsetting a single person, you have built a strategy that cannot be found by the very specific people who need you.

I see this constantly inside my membership, The Content Coven. Women with a real point of view, a real personality, and real expertise, sitting on all three because they're managing an imaginary audience that is far more critical than the real one. The algorithm isn't even showing your imaginary critics your post half the time. You are performing for people who aren't watching, at the cost of the people who are.

✅ What To Do With the Post You're Sitting On

Next time you have a post sitting in drafts because it feels like too much:

• Ask yourself who it is actually for, not who might see it and disagree

• Remember the whiteboard. Someone always thinks their reps are the ones everyone's watching. They're not

• Post it as is, without the disclaimer paragraph explaining why you're allowed to have an opinion

• Give it the two seconds of the world's attention it's actually going to get, and let that be enough

🎧 If You Want the Full Story

I unpack more of this on the podcast, including the exact moment I got the most backlash I've ever gotten from a single post. If you haven't caught the first four episodes in this Nobody Told Me series, go back and listen. Episode six drops next, and it's about why your messaging might be the missing piece even when everything else is working.

🛠️ Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• The first four episodes of the Nobody Told Me summer series, on building a personal brand, your face as a visual asset, building a story bank, and the five habits keeping you invisible

• Episode six of the series, on messaging as the missing piece, dropping next

• The Content Coven, my membership for women building this alongside me

Every one of these lives inside The Creative Bodega Podcast feed, so you can catch up in one sitting if you binge episodes the way I do.

✨ You Are Not Bothering Anyone By Showing Up

If you only remember one thing from this post, remember this: you have given yourself way too much credit for how closely anyone is actually watching you.

The gym you're afraid to walk into, metaphorically speaking, is full of people worrying about their own reps, not yours. The audience you're afraid to post in front of is mostly scrolling past in under two seconds, and the two seconds you get from most people is not a referendum on your worth. It is just the internet, doing what the internet does.

I built this business over five and a half years by posting things that occasionally made someone mad, and it still stings every time it happens. I have not figured out how to make that stop. What I have figured out is that invisible was costing me more than the sting ever did.

If you are tired of managing an imaginary audience and want a real one cheering you on instead, that is exactly what my membership, The Content Coven, is built for. Women building this the same way I am, in each other's corner instead of each other's comment section.

Tell me in the comments: what's the post you've been sitting on? I'd love to hear it, and I might just be the push you need to finally hit publish.