I have a growing network of speaker friends and colleagues and as such, I follow them online, keeping up conversation and friendship as we do in this digital age.
And quite often, I see pictures of people posted on a stage with captions about so-and-so "Killing It!" at an event. Of people "So Excited" that they "Can't Wait!" to be somewhere. This is all fine and well and I'm certainly guilty of these posts time and again.
But if everyone is killing it, is no one bombing? Is everyone really this excited? Our best face is the one best fit for online consumption, but surely everything that Instagrams is not gold.
This is still one of my favorite Portlandia clips, capturing so succinctly how not everyone is as happy as they appear online. Take a look.
I'm not saying that we need newsfeeds and streams full of sad truths and mundane musings of the moment. But just know that if you happen to feel sad when everyone out there seems to be killing it, it's not as rosy as they make it sound.
Whether you post it or not, it's okay to kill it and not kill it, to look forward and to dread, to shout for joy and lament in anguish. That is the whole life, not just the edited version we put forth online where our worlds are full of the idealized imagination of the self.
(Besides, I've heard some of these people speak, and I know they're not all killing it.)