I’ve contemplated deleting LinkedIn more than once…

Doomscrolling is never a good time and it’s like my brain finally turns on again when I realize 2 hours have gone by and I’m suddenly in a pool of cold sweat struggling to get myself out of there and get my time back.

But my time is forever lost. 

So, as these things go, I decided I had to quit. No social media platform is going to hijack my time - not even a professional social media platform. 

But the way our digital junky brains work nowadays is that you can’t just decide not to do it anymore and live your life happily ever after. I mean, that would be great. But most of us can’t do that. 

Or at least I 🤚 can't do that. If I want to quit, I reeeally have to quit: Delete it, burn it to the ground, throw it in the trash, and pour fish oil over it so I don’t take it out a moment later in a cloud of amnesia.

So naturally, I needed to delete the thing: Why face your fears when you can delete them?! 👏

And so I begin my mission. 

I go to LinkedIn. 

I search for the settings, where one might expect to find a delete button.

I get distracted after 4.5 seconds…

…and find myself scrolling again. 

And I mean scrolling as if my life depends on it. 

Even commenting. 

Quietly, of course, not typing out words (god forbit someone sees my comment), merely whispering things to myself. Judging all the cliches I see, all the same old boring advice and all those serious adults who spend their time there instead of doing actual work.

And then there’s me. 

I see myself in the screen reflection, and it’s not pretty. I realize I’m there because I'm intrigued by and jealous of those who have the guts to write something real and meaningful, and they are the ones making me stay out of fear of missing out. Missing out on their profound wisdom of being unapologetically themselves. Out of hope that they’ll inspire me to be braver. To write my own stuff and post it. Anywhere. 

So if you relate, I wish you the same thing.

Platforms and strangers shouldn’t scare us. The only thing we should be scared of is our ability to stop ourselves from being heard. 

Now… I’d like to put that in the trash. 

Que the fish oil.