The music you make for pleasure can remain valuable without becoming a public identity.

There is quiet pressure to convert anything you do well into something visible: a side project, an account, an identity other people can name. Once that happens the activity acquires an audience, and the audience brings comparison, standards and the question of whether you are any good. Playing for your own pleasure answers to nobody, which is exactly what makes it restorative.

Keep one practice entirely off the record this week, whatever it is. Do not photograph it, post it or report on it. If someone asks, you are allowed to say it is going fine and leave it there.