When Today Gets in the Way of Tomorrow

In my calendar today I had a 1 hour meeting, and a 1.5 hour thing. In theory, that would leave around 5 hours free to work on Unmarked Bounty. I achieved about 30 minutes of work, if that.

It mainly consisted of listening to a podcast for 5min segments at a time - needing frequent breaks due to the clenching, tightening feeling of pressure and constriction in my chest.

The podcast episode itself was upbeat and full of good advice and experiences.

I don't have a heart condition.

I have a cyberstalker.

One of the meetings in my calendar today was with a social worker, part of my ongoing system of professional support for the situation I find myself in.

Knowing that meeting was coming up in the afternoon put a real damper on my morning hours.

The podcast I was listening to was eliciting a complex mix of feelings, along the lines of "Yes, using my own name, I could probably do many of those things to test, discuss, promote, and iterate on my business ideas, if the general online environment wasn't as fraught as it is for me at this particular time in my life."

Unfortunately, "this particular time in my life" has dragged on for more years than I care to think about.

Hence the motivation to move forward with something anyway, even if it means using a pen name, and building an online business that looks very different to what I had once imagined (and researched, and planned out in detail, and bought the domain for, and had my financial and education plans reviewed by more than 10 trusted colleagues from a range of professional backgrounds. I cashed in a lot of favors for that part of it! Spent a fair chunk of my social capital. Oh well.)

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, not wanting to count the years of the cyberstalking and its ongoing impacts.

Well safe to say, it's been too many years.

When I drifted away from the podcast I had intended to listen to this morning, I found myself instead reading an analysis of one hundred victim narratives. Scrolling at pace to get down to the section sharing participants' voices:

“I still have flashbacks and experience anxiety when going into my inbox.” (Participant 81) (Worsley et al., 2017, p. 4)

“I began to fall apart and would be sick when I had to address incoming email.” (Participant 93) (Worsley et al., 2017, p. 5)

“You are made to feel with less control of your life.” (Participant 54) (Worsley et al., 2017, p. 5)

“My only response was to withdraw from the public eye almost entirely—pulling out of several high profile jobs.” (Participant 53) (Worsley et al., 2017, p. 6)

“He will follow me for the rest of my life and I can do nothing.” (Participant 95) (Worsley et al., 2017, p. 5)

I want very much to invest my time and labor into creative, future-oriented, interesting, and meaningful work.

On some days however, the inertia and deep sense of a loss of agency is too pervasive.

The inertia also adheres strongly to particular email addresses and inboxes that have been battered by volleys of harmful words. It's as if the fabric of the inbox itself has been ripped and pierced with holes, and is no longer a safe place for anything that's mundane, or joyful, or life-affirming.

I now have NO email what so ever, so makes it hard for me to apply for jobs online. (Participant 17) (Worsley et al., 2017, p. 6)

In my experience, when a sense of digital safety is gone from a specific platform or inbox, it's gone. I don't know yet if it can be rebuilt.

There are more than 15 social media platforms and other sites that I have grown wary of, due to the cyberstalking I have experienced.

However, we live in a vast world, with billions of amazing people, and new communities gathering every day, on new platforms, under new identities, avatars, and pseudonyms. People forming novel solutions, and reaching breakthroughs in many exciting fields.

That's the direction I want my mind to keep orienting itself towards - to keep feeding my creativity, my love of teaching and learning, and to keep noticing little seeds of inspiration for a different future.

It's possible. It just wasn't very possible today. It was a type of day that got in the way of tomorrow.

But I guess tomorrow can be its own fresh start, and maybe that's a corner piece of the solopreneur puzzle. To let tomorrow be its own thing, and to just keep trying.

Riley

(a pen name, for safety reasons)