Outgrowing my brand and social media
What does “sharing things on the Internet” look like now?
This July, the brand I created, Design Milk, turns 18. I started it when I was 27. I’m not the same person at 45 that I was at 27.
When I started DM, I didn’t name it after myself for numerous reasons:
It was not about me.
When I started, being online was… sketchy. I was scared for years to even have my name on the website because Heather got fired for having a blog,1 and maaaaayybe I was doing some blogging at work… 😏 I finally caved and added my name to the About page when I quit my “day job” in 2009 (it was also around this time that people started taking Internet jobs more seriously).
I knew we might outgrow each other at some point. I wanted an out.
My friend
(who writes an excellent Sub ) talks a lot about the trials and tribulations of naming a brand after yourself, so I’m not going to go into that in too much detail here. I’ll just say that I’m not a brand, I am a person with my own style and taste, which changes as I evolve. I have opinions. They sometimes change. I learn, I fail. Brands, on the other hand, do not typically evolve. It is antithetical.Humans are so complex, contradictory, multifaceted, but a brand can be reduced to a statement. A mission. A tagline. A look. And things unravel when you and your brand grow apart.
I’ve been in this weird liminal space for a few years now in which I'm no longer the owner or main curator of my old brand, and I don’t have a curatorial role anywhere. While I’m happily working, in a strange way, I feel… adrift. When you put your all into something for such a long time, it is difficult to unlearn that way of being. It took me about three years to disconnect from my old brand and another year after I left to let it go entirely.
In the past year, I spent a lot of time being quiet, reflecting on my career in an effort to better understand myself.
About two months ago, I was scrolling social media, liking, commenting, posting, saving, sharing, like I always do. Suddenly, I experienced a guttural lighting-strike—an oddly familiar feeling that was like seeing an old friend. Like muscle memory coming back.
My superpowers are in curation, storytelling, and sharing—and in my perspective. People had been telling me this for years, but I was always so focused on the brand, not me. There are some things you will never believe until you (re)discover them for yourself.
One of the reasons I think this has happened is that I’m having a “mid-life crisis,” which is a stupid name for self-rediscovery. It’s actually quite a beautiful thing! It’s freeing. I don’t feel the need to prove myself to anyone, and I’m more confident in who I am than ever before. And yes, you do become an adult version of your teenage self again, but better—with confidence, zero fucks, and 20/20 vision. It’s fantastic.2
Maybe this was obvious, but took me a long time to figure out:
I didn’t sell myself when I sold my brand.
The thick layers of adaptive self I built are falling away. I am peeling the onion. I feel joy I haven’t experienced in a long time. And the energy. 💫 Wow.
Maybe this was obvious, but took me a long time to figure out: I didn’t sell myself when I sold my brand. I realized that I still have endless possibilities at my fingertips. I have a perspective. I have opportunity. I have myriad interests. I have many platforms on which to do what I please.
I started sharing things on the Internet around 2002, maybe earlier. 22 years. Almost half of my life. I don’t know why I stopped.
This is a return to self, except without the limitations of an established brand.
✨ ✨ ✨
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
✨ ✨ ✨
But, how does one do that in the age of the attention economy, where we’re exhausted and overstimulated with content? Since 2015, I’ve felt like social media was an addictive high-speed treadmill, designed to keep us running to exhaustion, getting increasingly worse with each year.
The outward expectation (as well as the loud internal voice I’m purposefully ignoring) is that I can simply build another audience of millions. Is that my goal, or do I even want to? Not really, if I’m being honest. It would force me to do too many things I fundamentally and creatively can’t stomach:
Using other people’s “trending” templates, or building off of other people’s content.
Using “trending” songs that are artistically opposed to the creative story I want to tell so that I am (hopefully) rewarded by the algo.
Posting photos and/or videos of myself.
Adhering to recommended posting guidelines.
Creating ephemeral content that is easy to scroll past and forget about in 3 seconds.
Creating stuff solely for likes, comments, or engagement.
Making stuff that an algorithm likes.
What this tells me is that I’ve outgrown social media. What I want to do is intrinsically at odds with what social media has become. So what does “sharing things on the Internet” look like for me now?
Whether the answer is here on Substack or somewhere else (or nowhere!) is yet to be determined.
As I write this, I’m newly processing all of the above, and simultaneously reconciling the fact that the Internet may no longer be a place I want to frequent. What keeps me here is the part of me that has always inherently felt like a glitch, in search of other glitches in the vast arena of cyberspace, in a place where we can create any identity for ourselves.3 I hadn’t found my “people” until I found the Internet. It is difficult for me to imagine a life without it.
This period of my life is marked by deep introspection and expansion, in which I’m seeking quality over quantity, substance, depth, texture, nuance, surprise, tangibility… something I can really chew on. I want to lean into all of my curiosities, my weirdness, to find the curiosity and weirdness in others.
I’m not sure where I’m headed, but I’m used to making it up as I go.
For clarity, she got fired because she was talking shit about her coworkers on her blog. I wasn’t doing anything like that, I was just paranoid.
With perimenopause riding sidecar, though, it’s not always rainbows and unicorns. Sometimes it really sucks.
For more, see Glitch Feminism.
I’m with you, Jaime. But I just turned 65 so I’ve been wrestling with the idea of retirement, and while I like the idea of it, I also know there’s going to be a huge transition if I am not on the Internet every single day. I know that’s how I’ve identified myself for a long time. But as you said, it’s just not what it used to be when I started to in 2006 and it’s not that pretty of a place anymore. I miss the days of just the regular old Instagram without the algorithm, making us feel bad about ourselves (if we let it).
But here’s the good news for you. I didn’t start my blog till I was 45, so you’ve got a whole world in front of you to do whatever you want and I know you have so many talents to create any world you like for yourself. So yay!
Feeling all the way seen, as you write words I’ve been speaking for the past six months. It’s definitely not a crisis, to your fantastic point - I like the term Middlescence, while often referenced with words such as difficult and self-doubt it’s filled with readjustment, transition and learning. These years are also glorious, empowering rights of passage and while they are tinged with pain too - I’m here for all of it and what lays on the other side. 🩵