Q: “How do you handle sharing so much about your personal life (finances, sex, failures, free time)?“
conpoint: Such a great question. I have many, many thoughts about this, so gonna break it into 3 parts.
1. Life as a Story for Death
When I consider what to share online, I think about dying, honestly.
I think about the very real possibility of not living to see 30. The tragedy of dying young.
And I think about how deeply I’d regret not saying the things I wanted to say, unfiltered. How disappointed I’d be for living a life of fear instead of one of truth. For holding back on offering the world…something. Myself.
I don’t want to live without being understood. It is far worse to be loved as someone else than disliked for who you really are. I fear people not knowing the real me, and it’s one of the biggest reasons I have issues with maintaining a professional persona to hold a day job. So much time spent not being Me.
I don’t believe in any kind of afterlife, so personally, it’s important I make things happen in this lifetime, my only one. The best things that will ever happen to me will occur before my death, at least those I can bear witness to and experience first-hand.
I think of my life as a way to control the narrative of my death. The things I’m doing right now are the source code for my obituary, social media memorializations, and how people remember me. There will be small talk between those who knew me and knew of me.
“Did you hear about Connie? So sad.”
And they’ll scroll through the last few things I posted, recent pictures and status updates, as if trying to piece together the last live version of me as a mental keepsake. That’s why it’s important to look good in pictures and write real shit. 😉 Could be your last.
I hope to someone else’s God the last thing I ever write is honest, if nothing else. If people are going to talk about me, I want to make sure it’s actually me they’re talking about. It matters less whether it’s a good or bad review.
2. But What Will People Think?
Ok, so the writing is out there. But now come the sharks of human commentary…OPINIONS! *shrieks*
For those who’ve followed me more recently, I used to write about love & sex as much as I currently write about finance. That was my “thing.” Dating and having a really hard time with it, then lashing out at men and monogamy. That’s my best summary of conpoint circa 2014-2017. It is what it is.
I’ve gotten a few variations of this question:
“Do you ever worry about your coworkers reading your writing?”
I assume they mean the raunchy stuff. Show me a single coworker who thinks I’m sitting at home with an aspirin between my knees and I’ll show you a blog post about sex that didn’t change any prior assumptions about me.
The thing about “to share or not to share” is it doesn’t change the reality of what is happening in my life. This is *my* life—why am I allowed to live it, but not talk about it? It’s some ass-backward thinking. Especially the double standard for women. Sometimes, I think my dream job is being a money & sex consultant. I go places and help people feel more comfortable talking about the two. Then they go and get the money & sex they deserve and we all live happily ever after.
I feel a duty to talk about the things women are told not to talk about. Maybe if I’m being open about it, if I persist and share that it’s been a positive experience overall, more women will feel empowered to talk about it, whatever *it* is.
One of the reasons I encourage speaking your mind is the fact most people already have their minds made up about you.
If people like you, they’re inclined to find the good. If people don’t like you, they’re inclined to find the bad. If people are whole, they spread kindness. If people are hurt, they spread hate.
Prime example: When I finished my 66 Days Of No Sex challenge, I hosted a Q&A where anonymous commenters could ask me about the journey. Most questions were awesome and insightful. But one person took advantage of keyboard courage and slut-shamed me.
Let’s recap quick: I, a woman, wrote a series about giving up sex for a period of time. And I succeeded in that. And then someone called me a slut.
You can’t win, ladies.
If you’re interested in my reply to the commenter, it’s question #4 here. Make sure you pull up a chair so you can tell him to sit down after reading. Was about to buy that gentlemen a one-way ticket to Get Fucked, USA.
This commenter was prepared to come at me before I wrote a word about sex. One of my favorite quotes by Don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements:
“But it is not what I am saying that is hurting you; it is that you have wounds that I touch by what I have said. You are hurting yourself. There is no way I can take this personally.”
When you put yourself out there, you run the risk of having haters coming out of the woodwork to put you down. That’s life. But know it isn’t personal. You were just there for the recoil of their pain. You will always meet people where they are. You can’t control catching someone on a good day.
The amazing thing is—and I do still believe—most people want to be kind. Never let the haters stop you from connecting with the lovers. There are so many good people to meet. More on that in the last section.
***
While I am unconcerned about the opinion of coworkers, I used to be worried about my writing posing an issue at work itself. The shoe finally dropped at a previous employer when I was pulled aside by HR for the “explicit nature” of my blog (ha!).
The fear of the unknown is much worse than when shit actually goes down.
It’s hilarious in hindsight, but it was a bit scary at the time. I was early in my career and not as financially secure as I am now. I had more at stake if I lost my job. While I wasn’t fired, I worked out a deal with them where I could continue writing under a pen name and disconnect any writing from my LinkedIn. That’s kinda the backstory of using conpoint vs. branding everything with full name even though that was my initial hope as a blogger. I had major issues with “being someone else.” If it were up to me, I’d be Connie FUCKING [last name redacted]!!
After the initial conversation with HR, I remember thinking: “If I am asked to stop writing, I am prepared to walk away from this job.”
It was a life-changing moment. It was the type of enlightenment you can only get when faced with a real-life decision instead of a hypothetical.
I may not have chosen writing as my job, but that day, I chose writing over my entire career.
Ever since, my priorities have been very clear. I’m ready to choose writing over everything. I do think I’ll come to a crossroad again because of my blog. When or where, I don’t know. But I know my decision.
3. Nobody cares, but you do matter
Growing up, I was self-conscious about what people thought. From what I wore to how I spoke, I felt under a microscope for everyone else’s judgement. My mom told me, “everyone is too worried about themselves, they aren’t even paying attention to you.”
It wasn’t until I started my Facebook writing page that I found her words to be painfully and statistically true. Since it’s a business page, I have access to analytics on audience engagement and reach. If you ever want to humble yourself, open a business page and look at the hard data of how many people scroll right pass what you have to say.
An example: If my post gets in front of 1,000 people (reach) and gets 50 likes (engagement), then my engagement rate is 5%.
I recently learned from my friend @juliepierre_art that the industry average is 8-9% and “good” is anywhere from 10-15%. My personal benchmark and definition of good was a 10% engagement.
In other words, if 90% of people ignore me, I’m like, “Nice! That’s some good stuff right there. Super pleased.”
When you worry about what people think, it’s based on an inflated sense of self—the idea that other people spend time thinking about you.
The reality is most people don’t care much if at all about you and your life. I mean that in a liberating way, not a cynical one. It really is nothing personal. Everyone has their own lives and problems to deal with. They’re busy. They’re pressed on time and energy. Being indifferent is not a personal attack. Being preoccupied is not a personal attack.
This is actually great news for anyone who has reservations about opening up. It means that you don’t have to worry about what 90% of people think because they aren’t going to realize or care that you opened up at all! Fantastic.
I love this because it makes putting yourself out there less intimidating. It’s like someone opened up two giant double doors and said, “Welcome to the World of Self-Expression. Say anything you want. Almost nobody is listening!” The guy hands you a mic. It doesn’t work. You look down and realize you’re just holding a hotdog.
But in all seriousness, this is a great way to start feeling safe. Safe from scrutiny and judgement, safe from nasty commentary, safe from any actual attention. Nobody cares. And now you can just think about getting your thoughts out there vs. worrying about how it will be received.
How I operate: “Nobody thinks about me. Nobody gives a fuuuuck about me.” It may feel that way sometimes because I *am* me and all my interactions with people are usually about them or me. 50/50.
But I, like everyone else, live in a Me-centric world. My understanding of my importance is skewed. But as mother knew best: everyone is too worried about themselves.
Now let me hit you with a beat because what I’m about to say is super fucking important and will have you feeling good again:
It takes one person to change your life.
One idea.
One realization.
One sentence.
Just one.
You may be just one person that 90% of people ignore. But you still have the potential to change someone’s life. You even have the power to change the lives of complete strangers. Dozens, hundreds, thousands.
Everyone is born with influence. Not everyone uses it.
Your sphere of influence is massive and that’s a data point that can’t be tracked. Who is to say the person who never engaged with your post didn’t take something away from it? Who is to say your passing comment didn’t already change someone’s life?
When I have the opportunity to interact with the 5-10% of people that read my writing, it feels like the full 100%. I’ve received messages from friends and total strangers I would later cry about. Messages expressing how my writing helped them through a hard time, how they could relate, how they were glad somebody was talking about it, and most importantly, how they felt less alone. And some of these came from distant acquaintances, people I never thought would be in these positions, people I didn’t think about at all.
The power of your influence is beyond you. You don’t control where the ripples go. You don’t control where your impact lands. And the surprise of it is the hardest dopamine hit I’ve ever experienced.
I’ve been very fortunate that when I am vulnerable online, I am met halfway. When I go first, others lean in. When I open up, people also let me into pockets of their lives.
None of us are so unique that we are truly in something alone.
***
I was having my first panic attack ever in the lobby of my office building. I was squatting on the floor, sobbing and heaving. A woman approached me and asked me if I was alright.
“I’m fine,” I said through tears. “It’s just work.”
And she said, “Oh honey, no job is worth this.”
The next week I quit my job. I will never be able to find out who that woman was, but she changed my life. With a single comment, she changed the trajectory of my career, the boundaries I would set for work and my well-being, and the standards I would have for my happiness.
It only takes one.
***
So getting back to your initial question: How do I handle it? Saying private things in a public forum?
The consequences of staying quiet are far too severe. We need not struggle alone. We need not suffer alone. We need not mull over our lives in these little boxes of privacy and politeness. Humans are capable of complex communication for a reason—we are meant to connect and push back against anything and everything that tells us otherwise.
We are meant to talk about love and fear and trauma and sex and shame and romance and anger and loss and joy and loneliness. If God is real and He decides my time is up, my afterlife is in the words on this page. It lives in the threads and replies and direct messages of two humans trying to beat a society of clinical conversations.
Everything is up for discussion. Today, everyday, nothing is off-limits.
To not share about my life is to die right now.
Thank you, very much, for the question. I love you dearly, “stranger.”
I like fielding questions on my Instagram stories, so follow me here if you wanna catch those.
If you’d like to submit a question anonymously, ask me anything here and I may pick it for the next conpoint Q&A. Thanks for reading, I know this one was a novel. 🙂
