Would you rather be loved or admired?

Or put another way: what's more important, friendship or the things you create?

It was years ago, after one of my novels came out, and a friend kept praising it to the moon. The thing was, this friend wasn’t a writer. Did her opinion mean anything? Did they like my book because it was really good, or did they just like me?

What I really wanted was respect from fellow writers.

But over the years, I’ve begun to wonder why I devalued my friend’s enthusiam. Was the work really that important? Was critical acclaim so important? Wasn’t it nicer to have friends whose enthusiasm for me extended to the things I made?

I put the question to a group of writers at an artists colony once, on a beautiful fall day, while we took our lunch outside to at a picnic table. As I recall, the writers at first looked at me quizzically. But their conclusion was unanimous. What was important was objective acclaim, from people who knew what was what.

Put another way, the question could be why are some of us so wrapped up in the things we make and how good they are? It may go back to the art-on-the-refrigerator stage of life. If you’ve ever played around with the Enneagram (a system for sorting personality types) and discovered you were a type 3, you may know what I mean.

Threes, in the Enneagram, are labeled The Achiever. We are, in the words of the Enneagram Institute, “self-assured, attractive, and charming.” But there’s a dark side. Threes are also achievement junkies who live for recognition.

Threes want success not so much for the things that success will buy (like Sevens), or for the power and feeling of independence that it will bring (like Eights). They want success because they are afraid of disappearing into a chasm of emptiness and worthlessness: without the increased attention and feeling of accomplishment which success usually brings, Threes fear that they are nobody and have no value.

Many years later, I’ve switched from writing to visual art. (Really, refrigerator art illustrations aside.) Of that transition, more later.

But writing or painting, what remains is a thirst for praise. And now, instead of the refrigerator, there’s social media. Though it pains me to admit it, I get a hit of dopamine whenever someone likes one of my pieces.

I almost can’t wait to post a painting on Instagram. I check back during the day, to see how many likes pile up. I’m satisfied if I get in the high twenties, practically ecstatic if my likes go above 40 and, no, I’m not proud of the fact that I keep checking and counting. Shouldn’t the making be enough?

But I’ve discovered an interesting thing in all this. Since my Instagram posts also go to my personal Facebook page, I’ve discovered that certain paintings are more popular on one platform than the other. And that I feel a bit differently which platform the praise comes from. Because I follow and am followed by more visual artists on Instagram, getting a swell of appreciation there makes me feel like I wanted to feel back in my novelist days: appreciated by my peers. Whereas a big Facebook cheering section, well those people are just my friends. What do they know about art? Right back to where this question began, the friend who kvelled about my novel.

Clearly I have some work to do on my ego, and I’ll get a start tomorrow night when I begin studying the Mussar with the wonderful cantor at my synagogue.

Because surely the question goes deeper than Facebook likes and Instagram likes. It also goes to how I spend my time. When my calendar fills up with too many engagements, I start to feel almost suffocated. When will I have time to paint? To write, now that I’ve made a small commitment to the practice. I’ve been struggling to write this essay for days, but I’ve kept being interrupted. A member of my family has needed my emotional attention. There’s been a film festival to attend. Three different people have slept in our guestroom this past week.

Even going to my monthly art critique group yesterday felt like a burden after such a busy schedule. I was still behind. I had this to write. I’m getting a one-woman show (!) at Montclair’s Tiny Gallery. I had 17 iPad paintings to reduce to the size of business cards and an experiment in drying out some home-grown pot in my Air Fryer had cut into the morning. I’d cut the pot myself from a friend’s plant a week before and left it in Mason jar, where it had gotten damper instead instead of drier. Oh yes, poor me!

When I looked at the time and saw that I was already late, with a half hour’s drive to get there, I almost bagged it. Instead I sent a text saying that I was coming but would be quite late.

I brought a few paintings to be critiqued, but for once it wasn’t about those paintings and the praise I would or wouldn’t get from my fellow artists. I went because these people, who I’d met with once a months going on four years—on Zoom during the pandemic—were my friends. I went because I wanted not so much to be loved, but to to show love by showing up. To do the job of being a friend. Not to be admired.