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I’m inspired by myself to start writing more—journal style. As you can tell, I’m joking about being inspired by myself, mostly because of my really wonderful internal monologues of constant self critisism. But jokes aside, I’ve been wanting to explore more journal-style writing. I just wasn’t sure if people would find it useful or productive.
And if it’s not clear, I’m hyper-focused on the idea of being productive—maybe it’s my Capricorn moon, maybe it’s capitalism. Whatever it may be, it’s both deeply motivating and prohibitive, but the best things in life have duality. And with that, I’m paying homage to the early days of bloggers and sharing a bit more of what’s happening in my very unstructured head.
I launched this website almost a year ago—October 18th, to be exact. It followed about six months of building out the branding and framework. I wanted to launch in time for a tech conference I was attending.
The conference is a great networking opportunity and one of the few tech spaces where I feel truly seen, without stigma or questioning. There are so many badass people doing really cool things, and in that space, my ability to do cool things is never questioned. All while my queerness as a femme is never devalued; rather, it’s cherished and uplifted. I’ve put a lot of stock into this conference, and for some reason, I desperately seek the validation of the organizers.
In the past, I’ve pitched workshops to them, mostly focused on building better social media platforms for sex workers and on the history of sex work and tech, but to no avail. To be fair, my workshops were never as fleshed out or polished as I would hold myself to today.
This year, in a moment of pure delusion, I submitted another workshop. This time, I framed it from an entirely new angle, focusing on the rise of political extremism on social media, with an emphasis on the January 6th insurrection and its impacts on democracy. If you’ve literally even heard me talk for five minutes you know that social media’s impact on democracy is something I am deeply passionate about.
I convinced myself this was the year the team would see my value—after all, it’s an election year. Interference from foreign entities in the form of bots, censorship, and performative activism on social media is at an all-time high. If ever there was a time to talk about the impacts of social media on democracy, it would be now, or so I told myself.
I’m sure at this point you’ve used context clues to guess that my proposal was not accepted.
The rejection encouraged my often hypercritical thoughts of myself. What if I'm not really as good as I think I am? And that may very well be true, but my worst is still better than Elon Musk and every other weird incel man.
As time has passed, I’ve become more level-headed about the situation, leaning into logic. The reality is that despite my current career success, I’m not at a company sponsoring the conference, which means I have to work much harder to secure a spot. I also don’t have a technical background, which might be less of an issue, but one I have a bit of a complex I’m still working through.
While I’m now more grounded in logic, I didn’t just like, get here. Trust me, I’m still having many conversations about how I’m framing this rejection, compounded by another significant career setback.
The truth is, I put a lot of weight on validation from people who admittedly will never get me. It’s another fun little pattern of mine. The way I create and the work I do isn’t for everyone, but those who get it really fucking get it. I imagine it’s because they too navigate a world—whether personal, career, or creative—where people don’t fully understand them. Some of us are too magnetic to be encapsulated. Or so I tell myself.
It wasn’t until a recent conversation with a new friend that I realized how much of my career validation I’d placed on this conference. Why was I defining career success based on the whims of people who have no stake or impact on my career or life? These people don’t have the power to get me a raise or advocate for me with leadership. They aren’t going to help me build a brand or write my content.
And yes, I saw speaking at this conference as some type of career stepping stone, but the reality is it’s just one conference among many. Let’s say I did get the opportunity, cool, but then what? Speaking there wouldn’t immediately validate my work.
So yes, while I’m still focused on strategy and building something around opinion leadership in the tech space, it’s not worth my time to dwell on people who don’t get me. My time is better spent working. And when I’m not everyone’s favorite corporate tech darling, my time is better suited to writing and making connections.
I also am in part motivated by spite, so make of that what you will.
I’m sure there’s something about ego in all of this. And yes, some might think it’s egotistical to admit wanting to be a thought or opinion leader—and that’s fair; it kind of is. I don’t know if it’s worse that I want to be some type of subject matter expert on social, which admittedly is more masochistic than just wanting to be an influencer.
Becoming an influencer isn’t something I aspire to, and trust me, if I did, I would have done it by now. Generating clickbait and picking fights with other influencers online to grow a following is pretty easy—not that I’ve ever seen people do that. But don’t worry, my ego is perfectly balanced by impending thoughts of self-doubt, hyper-criticism, and a nagging need to reexamine everything I do. Add it to the long list of things I'm working on it in therapy.
My parting words: just do the fucking thing. So much of getting it done is simply doing it, but make sure you do it your way, babes. The people who get it will get it, and the ones who don’t will have to deal with their own demons.
Bye babes, love ya.
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