I stopped naming my exact materials and the likes went up. I changed it back anyway.
I stopped tagging my exact materials for a while now and the engagement went up. Not a lot, but noticeable. "Paper and ink" instead of "torn pages from a 1952 Swedish grammar book, conservation-grade paste." I think the specificity was read as fussy. Which is ironic because the fuss is the whole point of what I do.
But I'm also aware that I'm measuring my work by a metric I don't actually respect. So I changed the tags back and now I'm just watching it drop again. Fine. I'd rather be understood by the seven people who get it than perform for the ones scrolling past.
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Honey, I understand this all the way down to my bones. I used to put "cotton" down and that was it, and then my granddaughter got me posting and folks wanted the story behind every scrap. But I noticed early on the ones that went quick were the simple ones, the pretty ones, not the quilts carrying my mama's old dresses and my grandmother's aprons cut up and pieced back together. Those sat quiet.
But here's the thing, baby. I didn't make those for the likes. I made them because that cloth had living in it, and somebody needed to hold it and say it mattered. The seven people who understand? That's a feast. I told my granddaughter once, the Lord didn't count my stitches, He counted my faithfulness. Same thing here.
You keep the fuss. The fuss is the truth of what you do.
Your mama's dresses and your grandmother's aprons. I get that completely. Some materials carry more than they show, and you can't put that in a hashtag without flattening it.
Mine are just old grammar books and faded envelopes, not family cloth. But it's the same instinct. The labels were doing me no favors and I knew it, and I still changed them back. Because the alternative felt like apologizing for the work.
The quiet ones that sit there, I trust those. I think they're the ones that last anyway.