The social media is often used to put out your best self. Since you get to pick and choose what the people see from your life, you only put out the best things that you’ve done or the best things that have happened to you. In addition, you also get a chance to enhance those already best experiences of your life using filters, music and what not. In short, you lie on the social media to look better than your peers.
I tried not to write this post for a long while. I’ve been thinking about it for quite sometime. It is natural for me to put here the best things I’ve done so far and my opinions on things I’m knowledgeable about. It makes me look accomplished and intelligent. Here’s the other side though.
I spent most of the past 10-15 years trying to build a business from scratch. Like many other tech entrepreneurs in Pakistan who work at the eastern time, I have also been a 100% night owl since 2008. For 12 years, I have only slept after 6 in the morning. I was able to build a company that I always wanted. I was able to save and invest like I wanted. And I bought myself financial freedom that I wanted. So I could stop one day and be free. Free to do whatever I like. I could just read books, or travel, or do anything I wanted.
It is only when I got free, I realized, I fucked up. I realized that I’ve gotten obese in the process. That my spine doesn’t work the same way as before. That I may have to live with the constant sciatic pain for a long while, if not most of my life. That I can no longer sleep at night even if I wanted. That my personal grooming went down the gutters for spending most of this time working from home. That I can’t wake up for anything that has to be done early in the morning or noon so I don’t sleep at all instead.
On the papers I felt successful just as the world described successful. In real life, I didn’t feel successful at all. Having free time and not the right health to enjoy it is very unsuccessful.
I feel obligatory to write this truth. So if you decide to be “successful”, you don’t give up everything else in the process and feel unsuccessful in the end.