To Be or Not To Be...

A personal reckoning with labels, purpose, and change.

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“I think we could all introduce ourselves. Let's tell our names, age, occupation, and where in the city we live” - the book club organizer suggested. A totally normal ice-breaker. Not for me - I immediately felt anxious, uncomfortable, and… embarrassed?

It was our first meeting - and it was my first real book club in NYC, if you don't count the one I participated in the past as an ESL activity in my first years living in the city. We were all strangers to each other, and I was the only foreigner. And although I was feeling super conscious of that fact - of being the only one who was not American - that was not the reason why that question bothered me so much. What was bringing me anxiety was the question related to our occupations. I didn't know what I was gonna answer. Or, perhaps, I didn't want to say "content creator & influencer".

Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash

This fatigue or this restlessness towards the title I've been using for myself for over a decade is not new - and it's not the first time I share my thoughts about this topic here or on my social media channels. But before I proceed to talk about some of my recent reflections, I need to state the obvious: I'm pretty aware this all comes from a really privileged position. But I do think some of these thoughts can show a little bit of what it means to be in this position that lots of people see as glamorous - it can be, sometimes - while also adding some reflections on this social media era that we are part of.

My fatigue and perhaps self-shame towards the whole influencing world didn't start recently. It actually didn't start with these feelings. It started with frustration and feeling like I was never gonna be good enough or achieve the success I had set in my mind. And for success, I mean making money. After moving to NYC with my husband in 2014 and starting a content creation career - my niche was things to do in NYC, from a tourist perspective, tailored for Brazilians - I thought I had everything in my hands to be successful. A strong platform with solid numbers and a loyal audience that trusted my tips. What else could brands want? Hint: most of them were not interested in an audience that was not based in the US.

And because of my visa restraints - my H4 spouse visa didn't allow me to work in the US or make money as a business owner - and because of my lack of marketing knowledge, I ended up missing a lot of opportunities. When I got my Green Card in 2020, my situation did change - but so did the world, with a pandemic that shut tourism down in a few days and just forced me to deal with my frustrations. When things started to get back to normal, I didn't feel like my "normal" self. I was tired, perhaps burned out, and didn't want to go back to my old times.

After eventually ending that chapter and stopping to connect my name - or my brand, you could say - to everything that's NYC related, I then had to deal with other feelings. The feeling of being comfortable knowing that I didn't want that anymore for my life, and, at the same time, feeling completely lost and useless. Who was I without that "NYC expert" title? It's the question I've been trying to answer over the past years.

I think my restless feelings around this theme are connected to the fact that we live in a society, and I mean the context of the place where I've grown (Brazil) and the place where I live (USA), that rewards you for what you do for a living. It's a status. If we reason, we should - and we are - more than our occupations. There are so many adjectives we should be using to describe ourselves instead of what we do for a living. But it is something hard to remember when the context where you are inserted keeps pushing you to do the opposite all the time.

Besides that, as someone who has been working on the internet for over 10 years, I've seen everything from the blog era to the YouTube phenomenon and, finally, social media. Don't get me wrong - the internet revolutionized our lives and made many things easier. But it also came with some caveats. And in the creator economy, where the audience's attention has become the most precious asset, leading to money and fame - sometimes not necessarily in that order, and sometimes one thing not leading to the other - I also started to feel like I was living in a circus. Dancing, catchy phrases, running in gowns, making faces, blowing kisses, acting, transitions. And suddenly, everything needs to be conceived with that viral concept - and let's say that perhaps 50% of the viral things are not worth the hype. I feel so tired and overwhelmed from having to think about that all the time. You have to constantly chase a product, a restaurant, or a place with that potential effect.

And it doesn't matter how much effort you put into it. You will only feel validated if you get a certain number of likes and comments. Not to count the feeling of being vulnerable, having people judging everything about you - from your face to your body, from your accent to your voice. Suddenly, you are overthinking about what strangers will think about you. The truth is that nobody cares deeply, but everybody is ready to share some opinion, no matter how useless it is. And then, while you keep torturing yourself by caring too much about that, the online stranger is probably bothering another person and doesn't even care that much about you.

Another thing to notice is that the "creator" or "influencer" effect is everywhere. While I was thinking about this theme, relaxing at the beach, a group of girls were helping each other by taking pics of one another. For 40 minutes or so, they posed and changed angles. Can you blame them for that? I don't think so. This scene happened over a recent trip to Turks and Caicos - a trip where I posed for two or three pics and took some selfies with my husband. From what I can recall, it was the first time I traveled to a place and didn't post anything about it until I got back.

The night before our flight, I had a thought about packing my camera and wondered if I should bring it. The next morning, I consciously chose to stick to using my phone to take pics. Listen: I'm not saying cameras are useless on trips and vacations - I still prefer to take pics with a professional camera rather than my phone, but, for me, at this moment, for this trip, leaving my camera behind meant freedom. Freedom to enjoy my time without worrying about wandering around chasing spots to write a travel guide or creating content for social media. And when you spend so much time documenting and sharing what you do, it feels like a luxury to do things without thinking about scripts, angles, shots, and edits. Not everything in life needs to be incredible and fascinating. Most people live in "normality," and normality is completely fine. Not everything in life needs to be a spectacle.

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"I'm a journalist and I'm working on a podcast about women living abroad". It was finally my turn to answer the book club question. It was the answer I felt comfortable with. The path I decided to pursue to find more joy and purpose.

And while I was writing this piece, someone messaged me commenting that my "influencer" thing was "so cool and entrepreneurial," which made me realize most of the time, I'm the one judging myself and seeing myself with bad lenses.

At the end of the day, perhaps the dancing, the posing, and the faces are just a detail when you are doing something you love, when you have a purpose, when you know where you are heading. For a long time, I didn't know. I was moving along. It feels good to be back on track. I don't know if I will reach my destination. But I don't regret taking the train.