Sandra Cleveland shares how not participating on social media led her to achieve more in her personal life.
“Are you over forty? You’ve been out of tech for how long? Every year out is actually five, so that’s a hundred years,” the recruiter said. After two decades away from an office, two decades building things that don’t show on a resume, I needed to go back. “How are you not on LinkedIn?” another recruiter asked bewildered. “People will think you’re really weird and you’ll never get hired.” I had spent my career being on call, so when I stopped, I didn’t want to feel tethered.
I skipped Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. I just called my friends. I had somehow missed an entire social media black hole. Instead of logging in, I stayed busy. I was raising grounded kids, caring for an aging parent, starting a youth sports league, launching an environmental education program, saving the girls’ sports team at a local high school and raising money for a public school.
I was working all the hours I had before, just without catered lunches, visits to hair salons, salary or respect. At first, the recruiter’s comments really stung. But then I started thinking about what I had actually done during those years. I’d brokered peace between India and Pakistan, at least on an artificial turf field anyways. I built a dreamy garden out of a charred lot from the 1991 Oakland fire.
I hauled rocks down steep hills and hunted for plants at botanical gardens with my best friend Ruth. All the neighborhood kids came to play in the garden. I realized that I just had to own what I’d accomplished. And eventually, someone else saw the value too. I ended up getting a great tech job.