I'm walking in the Youyangs on my birthday: 39. I left the house early to beat the hot afternoon and the sun is just beginning to rise. The track snakes through scribbly gum and granite, the kind of country that looks dry and sad from the road but reveals itself to be something grand once you're amongst it. No phone — because I refuse to carry one — just sandals, water, and a mind that won't settle. What it keeps circling back to is the account. The Instagram account I made for Lunniss Furniture. The one I still have. The one I check on my wife's phone when she's not looking, or late at night on the laptop, scrolling through other makers' feeds with the same compulsion I thought I'd left behind years ago.
In 2019 I deleted everything — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, personal website, domain registration. Scorched earth. Gone dark. I refused to use a smartphone and still refuse. I am loud about what these platforms have done to attention, to community, to children. I'm the one who lectures at dinner parties. People roll their eyes.
And then I started making furniture professionally, and within weeks I had an Instagram account.
I don't remember the exact moment I made it, only the justification: everyone else is there, how will people find you, you need to be taken seriously as a maker and makers are on Instagram, it's not the same as a personal account, it's just business.
Seventy-four posts in nearly four years. Some people do that in a week. The account exists, but barely, stinging like a splinter I can't dig out.
And here's the bitter part: it's done nothing for me. Not one commission has come from Instagram. Not one. Every commission I've ever received came from word of mouth, from someone who saw a piece in person, from the website, from a referral. Even the decals on my car have generated enquiries; the account, zero.
The track steepens and my legs burn. The scrub thins as I climb and the granite outcrops start to show. I stop to drink water and the thought that's been waiting surfaces: the account isn't about business at all. It's about fear.
I deleted everything because I believed — genuinely, deeply — that these platforms were and are doing catastrophic damage. I read the research. I watched what they did to people I loved. To myself. I didn't want to be complicit in that machine.
And yet I made an account anyway. I feed the algorithm, even sporadically. When Meta reports their monthly active users to shareholders, I'm part of that number. The Machine doesn't care about my justifications. It doesn't care if I use the platform reluctantly or enthusiastically, only that I use it. Every account — even the ones maintained by hypocrites who lecture their friends about digital detox — legitimises the platform. I'm not beating the guards by being a bad Instagram user. I'm still in the prison.
The real question, the one I've been avoiding: if I'm building The Heavy Life on the premise that I can own my own platform and bypass the algorithmic nightmare entirely — then why is the account still there?
Because I don't fully trust that the alternative will work. Because I'm afraid of making the wrong bet. Because what if I delete it and two years from now I realise I needed it? What if everyone else knows something I don't?
As long as that account exists, I'm telling myself I don't believe in the thing I'm building.
I'm near the summit now. The Bellarine Peninsula stretches out below — the great southern firebreak to the south, the bay to the east, Geelong somewhere in the middle distance. The wind picks up. I sit on a rock and let the view settle.
The Instagram account isn't a safety net. It's a vote of no confidence in myself.
The turn, when it arrives, is simple: the Instagram account isn't a safety net. It's a vote of no confidence in myself.
Every day it exists I'm saying the newsletter might not be enough, the website might not generate commissions, the Heavy Table might not build the connection I need. So I'll keep this door open, just in case. But I already know the door leads nowhere. Zero commissions. Seventy-four posts. A low-grade compromise of my principles and the nagging knowledge that I'm not living my values.
I've made this exact argument to other people. I've told friends to delete their accounts, explained at length and at volume why staying on these platforms is a form of slow surrender. And then I check my furniture account on my wife's phone at 11pm to see if anyone liked the photo I posted that same morning.
The account is the last thread. I cut all the others years ago — every platform, every profile, the smartphone itself. I went offline because I believed it was the right thing to do and I still believe that. But I kept one thread intact. One little compromise. One hedge against the possibility that I'm wrong.
I'm walking back down now. The descent is faster, always. The rising heat behind me, the car park ahead.
I'm thirty-nine today. I'm working hard on a business model that doesn't need platforms like Instagram — that is premised on not needing it. The newsletter is growing, the first Heavy Table lunch is scheduled for June, the first quarterly drop goes out in September. The whole architecture is built on the idea that I have my own platform and connect with people directly, without performing for an algorithm or paying for space in someone else's empire.
Maybe I delete it today. Maybe I sit with it for another week.
But I know what the right move is.
I reach the car park. I'll drive home, eat cake with the kids, probably go out to the workshop for an hour before dinner. And maybe — maybe — I'll open the laptop one more time tonight.
Not to scroll. To delete.