One of the things I’m great at online is turning a life experience into something valuable and relatable for other people to consume. That’s authenticity, baby.
I’ve always loved that about what I do. I love that I can connect with people through my experiences. I love getting to be myself online. I love taking something I’ve learned, noticed, fucked up, survived, laughed about, or figured out and turning it into something that makes another person say, oh my god, me too.
But for the second time this year, authenticity feels like a curse. I don’t have the energy to feel everything I’m feeling and make content out of it too.
The first time was April, when my Uncle Darin died. He was part of the reason I always found so much joy and value in not being the only content creator in my family. His very public battle with ALS and then his death made me think a lot about the fact that the things we make online really do become part of our legacy. There are pieces of him that still exist because he shared them, a friend of mine told me she took the time to get to know him posthumously through his content and that he seemed so funny and kind and creative, and he was.
I found that incredibly meaningful. My friend got the opportunity to know my dead uncle because he left enough of himself online to be known forever – that’s amazing. But his death made social media feel heavier and sadder than it ever had before, and it was also the first time I took a big break off and noticed it affected my growth online.
April was also when I really started taking my mental and physical health seriously, which has basically become a part-time job of its own. I’m unpacking and undoing years of stress and defenses. I’ve got three therapists on the calendar every week – them plus me is enough for doubles pickleball. I am learning healthier emotional skills and, in a lot of ways, learning how to actually take care of myself for the first time in my life.
It is empowering – it is also fucking exhausting. I feel raw a lot. It’s a tired you can’t sleep off, you just have to keep going.
And unfortunately, the internet does not particularly care that you are undergoing a profound internal renovation unless you can post something about it. The content machine would still like its little treat, no “please” and no “thank you” coming.
All year, I’ve been seeing exponential growth online because I’m being completely myself, but also because I’ve become increasingly consistent about posting. There is no magical number of posts that guarantees growth. Virality is never really a goal of mine. But social media works like any other brand-building exercise: consistency matters.
Except my brand is me, my life, my thoughts, my face, my stories.
And sometimes it is incredibly hard to find the energy to package those things while I’m simultaneously trying to keep myself together, grieve, grow, figure out who the fuck I am, get my heart broken, work my regular job, feed myself, clean my apartment, answer texts, go to appointments, pay bills, and generally perform the administrative duties associated with being a human woman alive in the world.
When something big happens in my life, my posting slows down. Then my growth slows down. And then it sometimes takes weeks of consistency to get everything moving again.
Which means somewhere in the back of my brain, even during some of the hardest moments of my life, there is an awful little content strategist with a clipboard going, this is going to fuck up the metrics.
I hate her but unfortunately, she is also me.
And now it’s August. I made an extremely painful mistake trusting someone I thought would care for me and my heart a fuck of a lot better than he did at the end of ten months. I feel about two inches tall. I feel like I was a placeholder for someone better, and was essentially told as much.
I trusted this person. I respected and adored him.
And I do not have the gas to turn what happened into something consumable for everyone else. I don’t have a carousel about what I learned. I don’t have “five signs you’re being used as a placeholder” content scripted. I don’t have a thoughtful essay about choosing yourself or trusting your intuition or knowing your worth. I don’t have a cute little Reel where I stare meaningfully out a window while text appears over my face.
And I really don’t think I ever will.
Some experiences eventually become stories. Some become lessons. Some become jokes. Some become a little piece of wisdom you get to post, and every bump in the save and share metrics makes it all worth it.
Authenticity matters deeply to me. I never want to be the kind of person online whose life appears inexplicably perfect, who always packages everything up in a neat little bow for everyone to consume.
I’ve spent years getting pretty good at navigating what parts of my life I share, protecting other people’s privacy, and only saying exactly as much as I feel comfortable saying. Usually, I can find that line and create something valuable out of my experience and right now, I can’t.
Because when authenticity is part of your brand, there is this strange pressure when your real life becomes something you absolutely do not want to talk about.
I don’t want to share. I also don’t want to hide behind a queue of old videos and pretend everything is fine. But the game rewards consistency, so I feel fucking stuck.
Maybe this is the downside of building something around being a person instead of a niche.
I am not a fashion account that can keep posting outfits when my heart is broken. I am not a recipe account that can make another recipe you can’t wait to save.
The connective tissue of everything I make is me. My perspective is the product. My personality is part of the thing people come back for.
Most of the time, I think that is incredibly cool. Right now, it feels like authenticity is a curse.
Because the same instinct that has helped me build a community, my instinct to notice what something means while I’m living through it, is still firing while I’m hurting.
Some tiny piece of my brain is already observing all of this. I’ve thought of no less than four posts I could make about trust and heartbreak and casual relationships not being so casual if you let them marinate too long. Part of me can’t help but write the b-roll text and the blog post and think of what cover image would work best.
And I want to tell her to shut the fuck up.
I don’t owe the internet the best story I can make out of one of the worst things I’ve felt.
So I’m going a little dark. For the first time in ten years, I’m deleting apps that have been the first thing I reach for when I pick up my phone. I love my corner of the internet, people are kind and helpful and funny and I like being one of them.
I just need some of the energy I normally spend turning my life into something other people can hold to belong entirely to me for a while.
I am tired.
I am sad.
I am hurting.
And for the first time in a long time, I wish to high heaven I hadn’t turned part of myself into a brand I now have to run while bleeding.
