In 2024, I thought a lot about

I am prone to oversharing. 

In fact, I have pretty much made a career out of it. I share my thoughts, fears and opinions in person, over social media, via blog posts and on stages at the drop of a hat.

People I’ve never met in person are familiar with my ups and downs at work, my health, my travels and my ambitions. My openness has been called brave, inspiring, narcissistic and irritating. It’s provided me with an army of acquaintances around the world, but probably no more close friends than if I’d never popped my head above the parapet and uttered (or written) a word.

I wear my commitment to working in the open as a badge of honour and have spent years advocating for others to follow suit.

The problem though, and the reason I’ve been thinking a lot about it, is that I am tired of it and really feel like it is time to shut up. I don’t know whether those peak Covid years rewired something in my head, or whether it is just a by-product of getting older, but the energy required to maintain quite so public a persona has become unsustainable, and increasingly less enjoyable. The challenge though, is that my professional identity is so entangled in my openness, I fear what would happen if I did quiet down.

This fear is my own fault. My career has become a patchwork of short-term jobs, generated by a short attention span, and held together by a loose theme and a high profile. If the profile declines, will it all tumble down like a house of cards?

To be honest, it was all a bit of an accident anyway. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I am a painfully shy person who dreamed of being a writer - as much for the idea of a solitary life of letters as anything else. But when it became clear that wasn’t an option, and that drinking (that age-old British answer to social anxiety and confidence enhancement) in the workplace was frowned upon, I was forced to construct an entire alter-ego. A version of myself that wouldn’t shrink away in meeting rooms or sweat over the slightest bit of negative feedback for days.

It just got a bit out of control though. I went from too nervous to speak in a meeting, to someone who spoke at conferences. My desire to write, but lack of the imagination to find anything to write about, led to me writing about my work and elements of my life… obsessively. Readers of my blog found out about my diabetes diagnosis before my parents, for example, and they often know when I am about to leave a job before even I do because they can see the signs in my writing. I’ve found myself invited to speak at events in other countries because people there saw me sharing my travel plans. I’ve been uninvited to an interview because something I wrote offended somebody important (well, they were important then… less so now).

Twitter, for good and bad, amplified everything. I became addicted to the dopamine hits from interactions with my posts and talks and general nonsense. Then, as my profile grew in the little niche I inhabited, I found my career started to benefit considerably. So I leaned in more and more.

Eventually, it just became a case of living up to expectations - even if those expectations were mainly imagined, or my own.

So now here I sit. The poster child for openness wanting to close myself off.

It comes to something, I suppose, when a white middle-aged, middle-class, straight guy realises he’s said too much and that it’s time to keep his thoughts to himself. But that’s the point I’ve reached. Nobody wants to become the embodiment of Abe Simpson yelling at clouds, but if the comparison is already on your mind, is it too late?

I know it’s ironic whining about this in an online essay but, while I might have thought about it a lot, I haven’t actually changed anything yet. Let’s not get carried away.

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So, in 2024, I thought a lot about shutting up.

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In 2025, I might just…

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