That's what I wrote when I came back to LinkedIn recently. Short, a little dry, kind of embarrassing to admit. People related to it immediately.
But the longer version is more interesting.
The return
I used to post every day. CSS tips, UX observations, little things I noticed about how people move through interfaces. I was genuinely excited about it. I'd wake up thinking about what to share. Then I got a job, got comfortable, got absorbed into the rhythm of meetings and incident queues and just... stopped.
I didn't notice how much I missed it until I came back. And coming back made me think about why I left in the first place. And that made me think about what social media actually is now and what we're all doing on it.
So now I'm back. Not with a strategy or a content calendar. More like an experiment.
What makes people stop scrolling? What gets a reaction and what disappears into the void? I have theories but no data. And the only way to get data is to show up and pay attention.
Also, rejection therapy. Because apparently posting on the internet still makes me nervous and I think that's worth pushing through.
How social media actually changed
Here's what I keep thinking about. Our phones are our TVs now. That's not a metaphor anymore, it's just true.
We don't sit down to watch something scheduled at a specific time. We scroll through hundreds of micro-moments from real people living real lives and decide in about half a second whether to stay or keep moving. The average human attention span online is now shorter than a goldfish. Which is either depressing or fascinating depending on your mood.
And it's changed everything around it. The way brands sell. The way people find jobs. The way ideas spread. The way trust gets built between a stranger and an audience.
Sales used to be about reach, get your message in front of as many people as possible. Billboards. TV spots. Email blasts. Now it's about resonance. Does this person feel real? Do I trust them? Do I want to keep watching? You can have a million followers and no trust, or a thousand followers and genuine influence. The metric that used to matter most is now almost beside the point.
Every person with a phone is now a potential channel. A media company of one. Including me. Including you.
The niche question
Everyone says you need a niche. Find your lane, stay in it, build an audience around one specific thing.
I don't have mine yet. I'm a tech person who loves integrations and APIs and also thinks about UX and also wants to try UGC content creation and also finds the sociology of social media genuinely fascinating. That's either a problem or just an honest starting point.
I think the people who say "find your niche first" are skipping the part where you have to try things before you know what fits. You don't find a niche by thinking about it. You find it by showing up, making things, paying attention to what feels natural and what feels like a performance.
So that's what I'm doing. Natural, honest, with a dry edge of humor. No performing confidence I don't have. Just curiosity and consistency and seeing what happens.
Why this matters for people in tech specifically
If you work in tech and you're not building any kind of public presence, I'm not saying you have to, but it's worth at least thinking about.
The way people get hired is changing. The way people find collaborators is changing. The way you demonstrate what you know is changing. A CV is still important but it's increasingly one part of a bigger picture. What do you write about? What do you build in public? What problems do you talk about?
I'm not saying become an influencer. I'm saying show up somewhere consistently and be honest about what you're learning. That's it. The bar is lower than it looks.
I know because I just came back after years away and the most common response I got was "same."
So. Here we are. Let's see what this social media thing does.