I’ve come to the real dread that I’m gonna just have to get over as fast as I can. My next door neighbor and I were working on something and she asked how the job search was going. I said I hadn’t heard back at all in the past week and figured it was probably in part because I have no social media presence.

She was like “yup, that’ll kill ya in the market today.”

I knew the day was coming when I’d have to gird my loins and go forth into social media, especially if I was trying for work at home jobs. Now it just has to happen a lot quicker and sooner than I initially planned.

The only social media platforms I ever got involved in was Facebook when I was in college, and that was mainly to catch up with club events and a few friends outside of school who wanted to show photos and all that. Then I was desperately looking for a job and went to LinkedIn (which ended up being a way for one of my cyber-stalkers to keep tabs on me easier, so I shut it down first). FB wasn’t all that great with security and the upgrades would knock my privacy settings off and I’d have to jump in and reset them. Damned annoying. Lastly, there was family that came looking for me, and after some badgering I included my mother and a few others. Within a year, I sure got sick of seeing baby pictures of second or third cousins I’ll never meet, 2nd amendment memes, Liberal-trashing and “God Squad-ing”.

Once things went south with my mom and the passive-aggressiveness, I just said “forget this crap” and began the process for deleting Facebook from my life. Thanks in part to time, distance, and insane work hours, I’d lost connection with the few friends (and “friends”) I’d had on FB and in some instances, we’d moved so far past each other that there was no middle left to meet in, so I just let myself drift away.

I bring this up because after a few years, now I’m trying to navigate this social media realm that’s gotten incredibly more complicated. I just signed up for a course that has a FB group attached to it and will have to find a way to make my profile. I am debating whether or not to do the pen-name thing, though in the case of proofreading and online jobs, keeping my real name would be the best thing.

This is where my years of failing to understand networking–or how to do it properly–are going to kill me online and in the job market. I don’t want family jumping all over my FB and we end up with the same crap all over again that I was trying to avoid the last time around (and considering how vitriolic some people have become over the years, I REALLY don’t want to deal with those negative vibes. I’m busy trying to get through my anxiety driven ones as it is.). I also have a unique name that makes it very easy for people to find me (which is why I give minimal identifying information on this site).

It’s going to be tricky because without adding a bunch of friends, how the hell am I gonna make an impression? I’m going to spend the week learning my online course as well as how to get a social media profile (and privacy) set up right for a more professional reason.

And yes, I’m aware I’ll most likely have to jump back into the LinkedIn waters again (which demands I use my natural name).

The privacy and security issue hits me the hardest and makes me dread the process. Just below that dread is not knowing what the hell I’m going to do with a social media page when I’m not sociable online. I can’t think of where to start because the whole reason I want to start new social media pages is for new interests I want to pursue. A clean slate. A fresh start. A new life where I actually can do something and am willing to put myself out there.

The trouble is, how private can I be and how far can I reach, all at the same time… and what do I want to say? Oh, the questions keep chasing a rabbit around my brain. It’s going to take a lot longer than I thought to find a new job, especially if my lack of social media presence is that big a deal. A casual Google search for my name brings back so little, and it’s all either really old or mixed-up info. I’ll have to test the waters because online work is going to require different avenues of communication and networking possibilities.

I guess I’m just annoyed and a bit freaked out that I’m basically starting from scratch and don’t have a clear plan. I’ll have to sleep on it and think about what I really want (and how many opportunities I want to present myself for so I don’t have a ton of profiles out there, in case I select something that would allow my pen-name to be an option). I’m worn out from working outside a good part of the day, so lying there, thinking and eventually sleeping, might just help me come up with a good, basic plan.

About to fall asleep, so might as well cut this short and think on it some more…