Reflection: On Invisibility, Social Media, and Writing My Memoir

Curating my public identity in the now and in memory

Recording memories in the form of a memoir available to anyone with this link added unforeseen dimensions to the matrix of decisions I make daily about how to curate multiple public identities. In my day job as a real estate broker, I am relentlessly exhorted to perfect profiles on multiple platforms and engage, engage, engage. Most days, I just want to delete them all.

For one thing, I am socially confused. Another way of saying I am just not good at curating and it is probably too late to recover from past errors of judgment and neglect.

I have a personal Facebook account pre-dating the advent of business Pages. There my “friends” are an unruly mix of 1,791 clients, random acquaintances and actual IRL friends. Two real estate Business Profiles/Pages, to separate my general practice from my conservation work. These have almost no followers. An Instagram account that cross-posts to one of my real estate Facebook accounts, but that I mostly use for stories that tend towards a bit of the personal; I was supposed to market myself professionally here. Should I delete my Twitter account since I mainly just read randomly on it? Did anyone read even one of my 3,533 tweets? Why am I choosing to share this Substack only to my personal not professional Facebook profiles, but contradictorily post it to LinkedIn, which is explicitly for professional networking? This is what I mean by socially confused.

I am even more confused about the task of curating my inner experience and thoughts and opinions, versus the task of curating my outer identity and appearance.

As I write this memoir, I spend hours absorbed in the world of my mid-30s, when I could work hard and play hard without needing much sleep, hike for hours in the Himalayas and still jump up for one last kora, dress for professional success in Hermes scarves and Ferragamo pumps but turn heads when I shed the suit for a bikini. Alas those mid-30s were thirty years ago. I no longer wear a bikini to the beach.

I stopped coloring my hair during the pandemic. I truly love the result. Rarely a day goes by without someone telling me how much they love my hair. Good friends who would not hesitate to let me know if it was awful. Total strangers who have nothing to gain. Young people without a single gray strand. People whose hair would also be some gorgeous shade of gray if they just let it. Straight men and gay men. Straight women and gay women. I am more than ok with the way my hair looks in selfies and group shots and video calls. But I canʻt embrace the bags under my eyes or the fine lines on my upper lip or the way my cute dimples became the areas cosmetologists point to as begging for just a bit of filler.

Donʻt even get me started on the age spots on my hands.

As I time block to scroll through Instagram, “liking” real estate professionals posts out of some acquired belief that doing so will result in referrals, I think “Arenʻt these supposed to be professional accounts not dating app profiles?” Why are most real estate IGs filled with photos of the agents rather than of the properties they represent? Do clients pick us on the basis of looks? Or is that the insecure feeling-old vanity voice in my head talking and I am just missing the point altogether? Filler migrates, you know.

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I turn back to the memoir, picking a path through disparate memories, drawing them into some kind of coherent structure. There is much I leave out. But not all the ugly stuff. My goal is not to present my inner life in the best possible light as if polishing it for a resume or LinkedIn. Nor, on the other hand, am I exhuming unexamined emotional material for a belated psychotherapeutic process of interest to no one, not even myself. I am trying to discern what it is that draws people who know me to say “you should write your memoir” and also what might motivate strangers to one day buy it and read it even if they do not actually know me in real life.

I read a lot of other peopleʻs memoirs, so I get that without revealing conflict, failure, and indecision, there would be no narrative tension in mine. With no mention of romantic love or sex, little emotional spice and a big gap in authenticity. Is a juicy revelation that I would deem oversharing or counterproductive on social media exactly what makes a memoir worth reading? And then there is the wish to do no harm to others that is reason enough to keep certain stories and details behind the curtain. I think I curate on the side of conservative.

I am reading two books right now. Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos is the literary devil on my shoulder hissing in my ear that it is imperative to write better sex and master the art of confession. How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency by Akiko Busch is the literary angel arguing in my other ear in favor of the value of a private inner and outer life.

Perhaps the real reason I am in the grip of an obsession with writing and sharing my memoir is this, a paragraph of Buschʻs about the childrenʻs game of hide-and-seek that reconciles me to my contradictory pulls to hide and to expose:

…New York psychologist Alison Carper writes that “we all need to hide sometimes. We need to go into the private space of our mind and take measure of our thoughts. We need to enter this space so we can reflect.” Once we do that, she says, we long for discovery, to be found by someone who wants to find us.

Busch goes on to talk about the importance of this deep core of private self-awareness in developing a capacity for healthy intimate relationships. And for me as a writer of memoir, the intimate relationship of value I wish to have with my reader depends on my ability to offer my personal stories together with self-reflection that moves, inspires, and reveals new and possibly surprising possibilities for them.

As a writer, I long for discovery, to be found by someone who wants to find me. I do. I want to be found by those whose lives might be a little bit better for reading what I write. Hold me accountable, dear readers. Let me know if I begin to curate my writing for approval rather than for value. Let me know if it matters - what I write and that I write. But even more so, please let me know if my memoir becomes just one more curated version of me with the animated beachy background and flattering filter on.