Fiber Arts: Crafting Joy Beyond the Clicks

Finding Joy in Your Craft: Why Clicks Don't Define Meaning

When I first started weaving seriously, I had this vision of what it would become. I imagined a beautiful Instagram feed. A growing following. People that are excited about my work. I thought that external validation would be the thing that made the craft feel real and valuable.

That lasted about six months before I realized I was exhausted.

Not exhausted from the weaving itself—the weaving felt good, felt necessary. I was exhausted from performing the weaving. From thinking about how it would look in a photo. From counting interactions and watching metrics like they were the heartbeat of my practice. From feeling small when a post didn't perform well, even though the thing I'd made was beautiful and true.

Grand Prix towel in plaited cobalt twill

Clicks Don't Mean Quality

Here's something I wish I'd known earlier: clicks and followers and likes don't measure the quality of your work. They don't measure your skill or your dedication. They measure engagement with an algorithm. They measure what happens to perform well in a specific moment, on a specific platform, for a specific audience that you may not fully know or even fully understand. 

Clicks mean that for a fleeting three seconds, someone's limited attention span was momentarily captured by something that popped up in their socials feed based on their preferences, and they happened to have the additional two seconds to take action on it (the 'like') so that the post creator with a similarly limited attention span noticed there was feedback in the form of likes or maybe even a comment.

But what did it even mean? Whether the post was liked or not, the result is nearly the same. The post is quickly forgotten.

Some of my favorite things I've ever made got almost no attention. Some of them were woven on a whim, for the joy of color and repetition. A table runner that no one saw except my family. A wall hanging I wove just because I wanted to understand a new technique. A scarf I made because the yarn was speaking to me.

They were nothing to the metrics. But they were everything to me. And these items certainly took vastly more time to create than a few minutes. May as well enjoy the process.

Grand Prix towel in plaited twill

How Your Creative Practice Can Change

The work of finding authentic joy in craft isn't about abandoning all platforms or refusing to share what you make. It's about shifting where you derive meaning. It's about deciding, consciously, what makes something worth making. Humans are meaning-makers. We infuse meaning into our crafts and that gives us joy which we can then give to others, whether it's the physical objects we make or whether it's via teaching others to create.

My creative practice has changed over time. There was a season when I wanted to paint or weave every day and share that process. Now I want to share less and make more privately. There was a time when I was thinking about weaving as a product. Now I'm thinking about it as meditation or exploration. Neither is wrong. But the second approach has definitely made me much happier.

Your practice will change too. You might lock yourself into a brand or aesthetic too early, and then you'll want to evolve. You might discover that sharing your work matters to you, or you might discover that it doesn't. Both are okay. What matters is that you stay curious about what you actually want, and that you give yourself permission to want different things as time goes on.

The Real Measure

The truest measure of a meaningful creative practice is this: Do your hands know what to do? Do you reach for your craft when you need grounding? Can you spend hours at your loom or with your paint or your yarn and lose track of time because you're so fully present?

If yes, you've got it. 

You don't need permission from anyone else. You don't need the clicks. You don't need the validation. The meaning is already there.

And if you're still figuring it out—if you're not sure yet what brings you joy or how your practice wants to evolve—give yourself time. That's the gift of making things: you get to ask the questions and find your own answers, one stitch or one painting at a time.

Your Thoughts

What is your approach to "clicks and creativity"? Are you feeling overwhelmed by the algorithm and need to take a step back or do feel energized by the process of producing regularly? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!