Do you *really* want to know how I am?

On my recent struggles.

(This is not me)

It all started with New Year’s resolutions.

I thought it would make a fun post if I was to share my hopes and dreams about what I wanted to do better in 2024. It’s good content — and has the added bonus of holding me accountable, I thought to myself.

So, right after Christmas, I started to think about what should be on my resolutions list. Quickly, things went sideways. I started to think not about what I could do in 2024 but rather what I hadn’t done in 2023.

Yes, I have had some interest from media outlets about possible gigs. But, no, people aren’t falling all over themselves to hire me. Yes, my Substack had grown from 0 to over 9,000 subscribers. But, it wasn’t (and isn’t) at 90,000 subscribers.

Speaking of which, subscribe!

It got bad enough that I went public with it. On December 31, I tweeted this:

I got a lot of great responses. Including this one from happiness guru Arthur Brooks, who, over the last year, has become a North Star for me.

Good advice, right? (And, no, I haven’t done it yet.)

In the wake of that tweet — and the response to it — I started to really think hard about how honest do people really want me (or anyone) to be about their real lives?

Do you REALLY want to know how I am feeling? Even if that is NOT VERY GOOD?

Because here are some realities:

1. I worry about what the future holds for me professionally every single day

2. There are plenty of days where I feel like I have failed somehow

3. I don’t know if I can make a living in journalism

And that’s just the stuff I worry about in my professional life!

If you talk to anyone who is in the brand management world, they will tell you to NEVER admit this sort of stuff.

I still remember — vividly — after I was let go at CNN everyone was urging me to “put the best spin on it” and make sure, publicly at least, to appear thrilled ABSOLUTELY thrilled about the opportunities ahead of me.

But, like, I wasn’t. I was devastated. It felt like who I was had been ripped from me. I was terrified about the future. (Still am plenty of time.)

When I admitted these feelings, the phrase I heard more than any other was some version of “fake it until you make it.” Which I get. The idea being you need to convince yourself (and others) that the narrative about you is a GOOD one. That you — despite a setback — are all good! Things are going to work out great! Even if you have no idea how!

I think that line of thinking is rooted in the notion that no one wants to a) hang out with or b) hire a sad sack. Like, if all you want to do is tell people how miserable you are or why things are worse for you than they are for them, well, that seems unlikely to be appealing.

Which, again, I get!

But, I also think that we take “faking it until you make it” WAY too far. We are SO busy trying to convince everyone how gloriously happy we are that we never make time to reflect on the things we aren’t so happy about. Or talk to anyone about those things.

I spent a fair amount of time in the last few days of 2023 scrolling through Instagram. Which really crystallized all of this for me.

Everyone on Instagram is perpetually on vacation. Or dressing up for some celebration. Or getting a great new job. Or getting married. Or having a baby.

Because I actually know some of the people I follow on Instagram, I know that their realities are more messy. That they are struggling with spouses. With kids. With aging parents. With grief. With anxiety. With depression. With job loss. And on and on and on.

But, unless you know those people personally, you don’t know that. And we, societally, don’t have a way to talk about it.

This is not some earth-shattering revelation. Instagram (and social media more generally) sells us a version of life that is not real life. It suggests that your friends and/or people you admire are always having a GREAT time and THRIVING.

But for me, I continue to struggle with how much (or little) to share in this space. I want to be real. And, real, for me is that things are hard sometimes. I get down on myself. I second guess decisions I’ve made. I worry that I am not succeeding. Or succeeding enough. (Whatever the hell that actually means.)

At the same time, the general public is not my therapist. You don’t need or want to know every little anxiety I have (it would be exhausting) or how much I worry about what’s next for me.

And, I also know that the sort of content that succeeds best on this platform (and, really, every platform) is uplifting stuff. Pieces about kicking ass. And how you learned to be perennially happy. Stuff life that.

Where then to draw that line? How much is too much? How real is too real?

I don’t know, if I am being honest. I guess every person probably draws that line differently.

All I know is that I was really feeling bad about myself over New Years. Things are a little bit better now — although I am not really sure why.

And that life is complicated. And really damn hard. And that most of us struggle more than anyone else will ever know.

And that I AM going to make a few New Years resolutions — and share them. At least that’s my plan for now.