I Felt Like a Major Failure in 2022; I'm Turning the Beat Around in 2023

For the first time ever, I'm trying to be slightly optimistic.

Snapped by me, in Biarritz, France

Per usual, I’m about a decade late to every party. A YouTube addict, I’ve recently discovered “family channels.” Money and clout-starved parents who film, broadcast, and monetize every moment of their families’ lives. Exploiting their children without their consent or acknowledgment of child labor laws.

What in the Honey Nut Cheerios is this nonsense?

I’ve seen it all—dead bodies sprawled out on linoleum floors and in bathtubs. John Holmes films and crack-cocaine overdoses—and this is all before the age of ten. As an adult, I’ve watched Pasolini’s Salo and possibly every banned-in-the-USA horror and torture film ever made, yet these vlogs are a whole new dimension of terror. I was desensitized before I witnessed parents whoring out their children on the internet. And then I imagine how those children are altered because of their lack of agency and privacy.

The Ace Family, 8 Passengers/Moms of Truth, The Labrant Family, and every other looney tune parent that has publicly lost the plot chills me to the bone.

If I was a child who was forced to perform in front of a camera for millions (including the internet’s fair share of creeps), I would probably murder my parents seppuku-style.

This is all a roundabout way of saying that although my childhood didn’t exist and I was an adult straight out of the womb, at least my life was private. At least my pain was shuttered behind closed doors. At least I lived my formative years without the internet, for which I’m grateful.

Though, I was the first of my peers to embrace the online space. I had AOL discs and dial-up internet. I launched an online clothing resale business in 1998 when eBay was still slinging Beanie Babies. I had a Geocities account, and started publishing an online diary in 2002. I launched an online literary magazine in 2002 when people laughed in my face because print was prestige. No one would ever deign to publish their best work on the internet. Quelle horreur! And I was one of the few in book publishing who brokered deals with Disney, MySpace, Gather.com, etc., in 2006 because I believed people were increasingly migrating their lives online.

Throughout my 20s and 30s, I lived online. My job centered on building brands and audiences online. I shared the whole of my life (the good, bad, and violently ugly) online.

But something shifted in 2019. And it was a realization that was almost imperceptible. While there was much to love about the internet, we as a society have become tethered to it to an unhealthy degree. Our phones are our appendages. We twitch if we don’t have access to our apps. We feel irrelevant if we’re not posting our thoughts on anything from gluten-free food to politics. It feels as if we’re no longer humans but archetypes and avatars. Even marketers still refer to their ideal customers as “avatars,” which always makes me wretch because avatars aren’t human. Avatars are about reducing people and removing nuance and complexity. This is one of the reasons I shifted away from persona-based customer segmentation in 2017 when my colleagues rolled their eyes.

Because I had relied on the internet to fill many voids in my life, I started to deteriorate. Then, I read Jenny Odell’s seminal How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, a book about reclaiming our lives, and I felt awakened. I had an embarrassing public breakdown because of a depressive episode, which led me to shuttering my social media accounts. I started to see how people would detach themselves from me because knowing me wasn’t beneficial to their “brand.”

It broke me that I was no longer a commodity because I made the mistake of being vulnerable in a way that made people uncomfortable. Because let’s be honest—people still don’t want to be in a five-mile radius of your present-tense sadness. They want your comeback tour, your big news, your fist-pumping, your happiness reclaimed. They post their mental health allyship replete with suicide hotline numbers publicly, but demand you return to manufacturer settings privately.

For the first time in my adult life, I felt lost and irrelevant.

No longer did I have the fancy title. No longer did I have the fancy agent (because I fired him) and the fancy book deals. No longer did I have thousands of social media followers keeping tabs on me. I watched peers and friends of mine ascend. While I was genuinely happy for them, I felt like a failure. And I started to regress and recede.

It took me all of this year to reckon and recover from that. I had to learn that our mere existence is relevant. The fact that we survive this dumpster fire of a world without screaming into pillows, punching people in the face, or dying from the latest virus is winning. I watched these family channels and social media influencers preening for the cameras and I realized I don’t want clout. I don’t want to be known.

While I bear witness to the social media highlight reels on a daily basis, I’m seeing a person’s life edited, I’m seeing them parts incomplete. Because who could possibly know another person’s whole?

And this is the weight I carried this year and quietly set down. Because you don’t need to be relevant to be a decent human being. You don’t need to be famous to do good work in the world. Not everyone has to know your every achievement and failure. Sometimes, it’s noble to hold your wins and losses close.

So, it’s fitting that in December I think of the year ahead. Candidly, I don’t have a lot happening. I still don’t know where I plan to live. My career is unstable because I’ve become disinterested in pitching and the networking game—all of which stresses me out to be honest. And while I’m not old, I am getting older. I’m realizing I have fewer years ahead of me and I don’t want to squander them.

So, I think of what I have right now, in this moment. I’m lucky to be housesitting my friend’s beautiful home, which I have the space to write and think. I have a small savings (not much), but enough to get me by for the next six months. I’m relatively healthy. I’ve finally reconciled with my pop—finally realizing that while we won’t have the relationship I want, at least a relationship exists.

I’m finally realizing I don’t have to go at everything so hard.

I play the days as they lay. I focus on my clothing resale business, which brings me joy. I work on one story at a time instead of being overwhelmed with the idea of producing a book. I’ve plans to reach out to a few friends to rekindle our long-distance connections. And I’m making every effort to nurture my physical and mental health. Because if my core is solid, I have a better chance at achieving small wins.

If I sell a few items of clothing, write each day, talk to someone each day, walk and meditate and be kind each day, I have a better shot at leaving the wasteland that was 2022 behind.

I’m here to tell you that while social media demands a life of high-wattage smiles and OMG, I HAVE BIG NEWS posts, it’s okay to live noble and small. It’s okay to fail as long as you learn and claw your way out of the dark. Because there exists no light if we don’t willingly sit in darkness when we need to.

---