Thanks for writing this Pascal, this is very relatable to a lot of people, myself included.

I also remember the days when the "creator economy" didn't exist and it was just us designers doing the work. When dribbble was relevant. I'm about the same age and, with the demise of Twitter, also cannot fathom trying to build a following from scratch in 2025.

But... do we need to? Granted I'm on the in-house side of things, but I've found that taking part in the "social media content creator economy" is not always required. It's true that the work doesn't sell itself (this is true for in-house teams as well), but it doesn't mean that we need to spend hours a week posting all over the place to grow an audience in the hopes it'll lead to future work.

Anyway, I don't have specific advice, you're probably getting enough of that already. Keep your head up, your a talented designer, and there will always be a market for folks who like to do the work without being a professional PR person too.