We’ve all done it. Scrolled in bed for hours. Promised ourselves we’d get up and do something with our hands. Then opened Instagram one more time. Then TikTok. Then back to Instagram, because surely something new has been posted in the last forty seconds.
That was me for years. I wasted so much time on my phone consuming media, consuming reels, consuming everyone else’s creativity, and producing absolutely nothing of my own.
Somewhere along the way, consuming became the default. We scroll, we watch, we buy, we stream. And we forgot we were allowed to make things too.
Why I started my reading “business” in the first place
When I first started my Instagram book account, I had no master plan. No monetization strategy. No course in my back pocket. I just wanted to share my love of books with other people. I wanted to design graphics in Canva. I wanted to learn how to film and edit. I wanted to be a content creator.
And now I am.
Do I actually spend less time on my phone now?
Yes, weirdly. My screen hours dropped because I create most of my carousels on my laptop instead of my phone. But even on my phone, the way I use it changed completely.
Instead of scrolling Reels, I comment on bookish posts. Instead of mindless explore page time, I’m looking at the explore page for inspiration for my next carousel. I consume more long-form content. I read more. I’m just genuinely more creative than I was before any of this started.
And creating doesn’t happen in isolation. Walks. Silence. Journaling. Reading things you’re genuinely curious about. These aren’t distractions from creativity, they’re the inputs. The goal isn’t zero consumption. The goal is purposeful consumption.
Do you need to show your face to do this?
Absolutely not. I know massive creators who quit their day jobs to do this full time and have never shown their faces once.
I barely show mine. I have maybe 5 selfies that I rotate through every month. Most of my reels are voiceovers, and even those came later. I grew my account to 40k followers without ever speaking. So if “showing up online” feels like the gatekeeper standing between you and creating, I’m here to tell you it’s not. You can skip it entirely if you want.
“But what happened to having a hobby just for fun?”
I’ve heard this so many times. People who don’t believe in monetizing your passions. People who think the second you make a dollar from something you love, you’ve corrupted it.
And it’s a valid feeling. Not every hobby needs to become a business. Genuinely.
But I’ve noticed that the people who say it loudest tend to be the ones who already have enough. They earn enough to pay their bills. They have savings. They can afford supplies for their hobbies, travel a few times a year, and live in a state of being generally content with their life.
I am none of those things.
A little context, because it matters
I was raised in the Balkans. We never had enough for anything. Not even, sometimes, a carton of orange juice on the kitchen counter.
I was raised to be content with less. To accept that there was no real path to earning more or being more. That struggling to pay your bills was just life. That never going on vacation was normal. The first time I ever flew on an airplane was at 24, and it was a domestic flight to a different city in my own country. The first time I left Romania, I was 25.
I’m not going to be apologetic for wanting more.
In the beginning, I tried to find reasons to justify monetizing my bookstagram. I was afraid people would see me as ingenuine. I thought I should be okay with creating content for free forever. Giving away free tutorials, free advice, free everything, because that’s what a “real” hobbyist would do.
But I stopped feeling sorry. I stopped feeling guilty for wanting to be paid for doing something I love. And honestly? That shift might be the most important thing that’s happened to me in the last two years.
This is your sign to never let other people dictate how you live your life. Or how much you’re allowed to earn from something that started as joy.
A reminder before the practical part
You don’t need to create on Instagram to be a creative person. You don’t need any social media at all. You can paint. Draw. Color in adult coloring books. Sing in the shower like you’re auditioning for The Voice. Anything counts.
Bookstagram is just what worked for me. It’s what keeps me present, what builds my confidence, and yes, what pays my bills. But the bigger principle is just: create more than you consume. The form doesn’t matter.
How to actually create more than you consume
1. Start with ten minutes a day
A caption draft. A sketch. A journal entry. A single reel hook idea. Ten minutes a day of making something is infinitely more sustainable than ambitious goals that quietly get abandoned after a week.
2. Create what you consume
This one is quietly radical. Make your own versions of the things you scroll past. Even simple things. There’s something completely satisfying about closing the loop between consuming and producing.
I created a reading planner that I still use to this day, and also sell. The satisfaction you get when something you made starts producing income on its own is genuinely unmatched.
3. Set one real creative goal
Not a vague aspiration like “be more creative.” Something with a shape. A product to launch by a specific date. A content series to finish. A skill to develop in a defined window. External deadlines help way more than internal ones, even if it’s just telling a friend.
4. The two-minute rule, but make it creative
Before you open Instagram to scroll, open your notes app and write one sentence. About anything. It doesn’t have to connect to anything. It doesn’t have to go anywhere. It just keeps the creative muscle from going fully dormant on days when life is a lot.
5. Finish the ugly draft
The thing you started and abandoned because it wasn’t going the way you imagined? Go finish it. Badly. Messily. The completion is the point.
Completion is a skill separate from quality, and most people never practice it because they quit the moment it stops feeling good.
The ugly finished thing will teach you more than the perfect unfinished one. Every single time.
6. Give your ideas somewhere to land
If you’re not capturing your ideas when they show up, in the shower, mid-chapter, at 11pm, walking to the kitchen, they evaporate. Then you forget you ever had them. One note. One voice memo folder. One corner of your journal.
Ideas are slippery. They don’t wait around for you to be ready.
Final thought
The scroll is not your enemy. The scroll is just a default. And defaults can be changed.
Make one thing this week. Doesn’t matter what. Doesn’t matter if anyone sees it. Just close the loop between consuming and creating, one tiny output at a time, and watch what happens to your brain over the next month.
If you want to see what I’ve built so far (my templates, my reading planner, my freebies), it’s all on my Stan Store:
Browse my Stan Store → https://stan.store/nissaonlyreads
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