This may come as a shock to you, but I wasn’t always this shining example of cool you see before you today. No no no, quite the contrary. It was my utter lack of cool (perceived or otherwise) that has led me to this post today, but put a pin in that for a moment.

When I came to the Salesforce world, I was admittedly in a very dark place in my life. It’s not proper of me to go into detail here but suffice it to say, I felt like I had little value to the world, and yes even to those around me. It was hard to get up and go to work every morning, and once there is was hard to do and be motivated about said work. I muddled through because I had a family that depended on me and that is quite likely the only reason I didn’t do something drastic.

You see…I grew up in a rather small town and suffice it so say I was NOT one of the popular kids. As a matter of fact from a very early age, I was a target. My parents divorced when I was young so I was attached to my mother’s hip, shy and not exposed to much of the things that boys were “supposed” to get exposed to. My family was also very religious which wasn’t exactly a popular thing to be in school either. On the list of uncool things to be in school, I had many checkboxes filled in and most of classmates simply would NOT let me forget it; save for a small core of close friendships, I really had nobody.

I was also the small kid…easy to throw around by anyone who sought to establish their dominance in front of opponents. I wasn’t shoved into lockers and nobody ever drew blood thankfully, but the few times I stood up for myself, resulted more in laughter than deterrence. When you have constant experiences like this day after day, it really causes one to question their self worth.

Fast forward to my professional life. I was relocated early on in my career to the Chicago area and while I did manage to meet my wife and grow my friendship circle a little, I still carried with me the imposter syndrome, not of my work personality, but “who I really was” — I didn’t want anyone to really find out my background. That any persona I put forth was really just a mask that covered up my past as a “loser.”

Eventually I went on to do all the things: get married, have kids, etc. and during a particular rough period in my life I hit rock bottom — well rock bottom for me, hindsight being 20/20 I was still a very fortunate person with much to be thankful for, but when you’re in *that* place, you don’t see it.

Then as I started to pull myself out of some of these dark places, I took a chance and changed my career trajectory forever when I accepted a position at a colleagues consulting firm. It was just a tiny firm, three of us but it was going to introduce me to a community that I credit to this day with saving my life (I told you — a dark place).

In 2014 I wrote a silly Salesforce song called “That’s Why Admin’s Drink” and it kinda went a little crazy in the community. Suddenly I found myself going to events and posing for selfies, people were excited to meet me, to hang out, etc. For once it seemed that I’d found my home. This led to cofounding Apex & the Limits (a parody band that produced derivative works for popular songs and adding Salesforce related lyrics) and for a brief time, we were well known in the Salesforce community; opening up for Benioff at the first TrailheadDX, performing in the Dreampark at Dreamforce, etc.

I suddenly saw myself as having in some way, shape, or form…value. Not just value to a small group of folks, but (it feels gross to even say it) I had fans in a way. I went from no friends, to having actual fans (I actually signed an autograph at one point…). I think this is where things went a bit off the rails for me.

I have fallen into the social media trap: “oh look, I have 4,000 followers” (well I did at one point) and while that is not even a fart-in-the-wind — for someone like me, it was a ton. It became something that I could point to and think to myself, “lookie here assholes [from my past], I *am* somebody!” (maybe a little somebody, but those folks that pushed me around in my high-school days don’t exactly have people asking them for selfies and recognizing them). To me – that was a bit of vengeance.

I’m not sure what that really *makes* me? A narcissist? Probably. Shallow? I feel like that’s a yes. Someone with an over-inflated ego? Yep, check that too I suppose. (I also know I’m my own worst critic, but again a history of feeling of little value to anyone makes it very hard for me to even remote *think* of myself in this manner). Be that as it may, its who I am, and who I have become.

So why am I sharing any of this?

I’ve found myself glued to social media and while I was able to escape the Facebook trap nearly 10 years ago, the Twitter one is one I’ve always held dear (I joined *very* early on). MUCH has happened to me while on that platform and to be quite honest, it has inflated (falsely so I believe) my feeling of self worth but I won’t lie, it felt good to feel that. In light of recent events, I would like to leave Twitter behind me (I still refuse to call it “X”). Its very hard for me to let go and I will be doing so in stages.

I must be cautious because while you can find me on BlueSky (lifewithryan.bsky.social), and Mastodon (@lifewithryan@toot.community) I can already feel myself falling into the same tendencies I had and have tied to Twitter. Nonetheless, I feel the time has come for me to pull back from Twitter as it has become such a divisive collection of hate, conspiracy theories, and misinformation. For now, I’ll simply just stop interacting. I’m sure I’ll occasionally check in to ensure that those who have not yet made a move to another platform aren’t trying to reach out, and ultimately will one day come to terms with simply closing it and having my data deleted, etc. I’m just not there yet in my personal journey.

I tell you all of that partly because it is cathartic for me to finally admit that I loved the attention, and to come to grips with realizing that the number next to my handle means nothing, (that’s not to say I’m not thankful for each an every engagement and follower, etc.) but mainly because I’m learning social media is actually dangerous — at least for me, and now I believe, for our country. A move to Bluesky and/or Mastodon is a chance for me to reset my beliefs and expectations and begin to re-engage with a community that has meant so much to me since I stumbled into it 11+ years ago.

I’ll see you all (hopefully) in one way or an other, somewhere.

:wq!