Snapshots by Daniel Hindin

Private Life vs. Public Image in the Age of Social Media

As I spend more and more of my free time posting information about myself to various social media outlets, I’ve begun to realize, as I’m sure most of you have, that privacy is quickly becoming a rare commodity.

I’ve always considered myself an extremely private person. At least with those I don’t know well. I’m an open book to my friends and family. But I’ve always been slow to let new people in.

As social media sites began to catch on several years ago, I joined Friendster. And then MySpace. Not because I savored the idea of sharing tiny bits of personal information with complete strangers, but because I’m a people-watcher. A voyeur, if you will. A student of human behavior.

But I soon realized that you can only snoop around under the radar for so long. Eventually, you’ll be discovered by your seventh-grade science lab partner, and now you’ve been outed to your entire middle school class. It’s a slippery slope.

More than once, my instincts told me to erase all of my social media accounts and never look back. But, in order to continue my amateur psychological/sociological/anthropological studies, I didn’t delete. In fact, I added. A LinkedIn account. And then Facebook.

I began to grow more comfortable with the idea of using these sites as a tool to connect and reconnect. But, as a current job seeker, I began, a few months ago, to reconsider whether it was a good idea to have all the details of my life out there for a potential employer to see. With each status update and photo upload, I wondered what they would think.

But I soon realized I had nothing to hide. I’m a human being. So are you. So are they.

That’s when the entire scenario flipped in my mind. I had been submitting countless resumes for jobs that I felt absolutely qualified for, and there was almost complete radio silence from the hiring parties. I did all I could to revamp the resume. Add personality. Make myself standout. Still nothing.

So, I thought, why have I been concerned about what potential employers will make of the little snippets of my character they might access through my online profiles? I should be HOPING they’re checking in on me. I’m proud of who I am. I should be doing all I can to SHOW them who I am.

I’ve since logged on to more social media sites like Typepad, the host of this very blog. And Digg. And, most recently, Twitter.

Not only have I taken the bull by its horns in terms of shaping my own online image, I’m also receiving a valuable – and free – education. I’m plugging myself into amazingly talented thought leaders like Seth Godin and Jonah Lehrer.

And locally, I’m meeting some wonderfully inspiring people here in Chicago. A couple of weeks ago while wandering on Facebook, I came upon Social Media Club Chicago. I reached out to Barbara Rozgonyi, founder of the organization's local chapter, and she invited me to an advisory committee meeting. A few days later, I was ON the advisory committee.

I haven’t submitted a resume in weeks, and I’m thinking I’ll be better off if I never send one out again.

Much of life is about the connections we make. The people we touch. Whether those relationships are sparked online or off is irrelevant. It’s all as real as you make it.

Privacy? Yeah, I still value it greatly. A chapter of a book read while curled up on the couch. A walk in the woods along a meandering creek. A kiss on the forehead. I still have my privacy.

But I also have a lot to share. And to those who are willing to share their thoughts/knowledge/time with me, I’d like to thank you.

Everything Is Temporary

For those of you not in Chicago, we here in the Midwest have been experiencing a veritable heat wave this week, the peak of which rolled in today with temperatures skyrocketing above the 60-degree mark.

Just when I began to forget that bitter cold isn’t a permanent reality for this city, this little midwinter treat has reminded me that better days do indeed lie ahead.

I took the train downtown today to meet a friend of a friend who works for a real estate marketing/PR firm. He was kind enough to sit down for an extended lunch with me and proceeded to give me some valuable advice in regard to my continuing job search.

After lunch, I had some time to kill before catching the next train back home. On previous such excursions downtown, extra time was an unwelcome nuisance. Too cold to stay outside, I’d rush to the station only to sit and observe people racing by, peeking continuously at my watch until the outbound train was prepared for boarding.

Today, I had a particularly long time to wait, and at first I was annoyed at the prospect of twiddling my thumbs. But then I stepped outside and remembered that it wasn’t cold at all and in fact it was a very pleasant, sunny day. A perfect day to walk along the river and explore some new corners of the city before circling back to the station.

As I strolled and finally paused for a few minutes overlooking the river, I began to think about how nothing, really, is permanent. And about how many of life’s most important decisions are based on conditions that, at that moment, are viewed as permanent.

An extreme example of this is a few stories I’ve heard recently about people ending their own lives under the pressure of the plummeting stock market. These people must have viewed their previous, likely high-on-the-hog economic standing as permanent. And they must have viewed their recent woes as permanent as well.

I’m clearly simplifying these people's situations, but the point is that life has a way of taking unexpected twists and turns. It’s foolish to allow success to inflate our heads or failure to deflate our hearts. Those ups and downs do not define us unless we allow them to. And that would be a mistake on either account.

I couldn’t have told you midyear last year that I would be sitting here writing this blog entry overlooking Lake Michigan. And I certainly can’t tell you right now how I will be spending my time this summer. The one thing I CAN tell you is that anything is possible. And I, for one, am always ready.

One Small Step...

When I made the decision to move back to Chicago from California, my plan was to spend every possible moment finding a job before I would allow myself to proceed with all the other steps of starting a new life here. I would put my life on pause and then restart it once employed.

That was in early August amid prolonged weakness in the financial markets. Then came the September/October plunge and the massive layoffs that followed.

It’s now February, and I’ve realized it’s pretty tough to hold your breath for six months.

Many loved ones have asked me how I’m coping. There have admittedly been ups and downs. October and November were the worst because I was still in the all-or-nothing mindset of finding a job or not having a life at all.

Eventually, the holidays served as a distraction. Things slowed down, and it occurred to me that life in Chicago was happening to me, job or not.

Over the last month, I’ve embraced the idea that I may never have an opportunity like this again. I may never have another chance to take a step back, reevaluate my situation and figure out what it is that I really want to do with my life.

When I first decided to come back to Chicago, I knew this was the place I wanted to be, but I wasn’t sure what it was that I wanted to do here. I had been a journalist. I had been a commercial real estate broker. I had been a membership director. I began throwing my resume at any number of positions that my diverse background might qualify me for.

But this extra time has almost forced me to rethink my approach. I’ve stripped everything down to one simple word: Passion. What is my passion?

My passion is connecting with people and building relationships through simple words and images. Whether it’s in a format such as this one here or any number of other venues, what I’ve found myself doing in my free time is what I believe I will be most successful doing in my paid time. I’m determined to make it happen, and I believe it will happen.

But before I could come to this conclusion, it was necessary for me to take my foot off the gas pedal. I had to stop. And think. And even wait. I waited and a life has begun to form around me. Not a job, but a life.

I still have yet to find a job, but what I have found is this tremendous energy. I can feel a certain excitement growing within. Just knowing that I’ve identified a path for myself is enough to make me giddier than I have been in quite some time.

I now know it won’t happen all at once. But I also know that if you begin to put one foot in front of the other, you can eventually cover a profound distance.

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Status Is Everything

“Daniel thinks searching for a job is just as exhausting as having a job (if not more so), but it doesn’t pay nearly as well.”

Yesterday evening, after yet another long day of networking, penning cover letters, tweaking resumes, making phone calls and sending emails, I allowed myself a fleeting moment of weakness and entered the above statement into the “Status” box of my Facebook profile.

I quickly came to my senses, chastised myself and then changed the status entry before I shared my self-diagnosis with the world.

It’s not that the statement was untrue. Searching for a job IS exhausting. And it certainly DOESN’T pay as well as an actual job. But it sounded to me as if I was beginning to feel sorry for myself.

Self-pity is a fundamental aspect of human nature. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t, from time to time, think to themselves: Why me?

Why is it MY flight that was delayed? Why was it MY job that had to be cut? Why is it MY life that’s harder than everyone else’s?

The truth is that everyone’s life is full of obstacles both big and small. The difference is how we handle the obstacles. Some people allow themselves to become bogged down in Why Me Land. For some, it becomes a comfort zone, a crutch. Those people tend to lead very unhappy existences.

“Why me” is a one-way street that can’t possibly lead to anything positive. So what’s the point? Why get trapped in the vicious cycle?

So yesterday, in my moment of despair, I chose to straighten my slumping body and sit up in my chair. And I began to count my blessings. Sure, there are jobless people out there in far more dire situations than me – but that’s not my idea of a blessing. If I felt better about myself by knowing that other people are worse off than me, I could just watch a trashy talk show.

Real strength – and joy – comes from the inside. It comes from embracing yourself as worthy of good things. It comes from making conscious decisions that will bring you closer to that spot of sun that you deserve.

Part of the beauty of life is that there is always something new through that next door. It’s just a question of a person’s willingness to reach out and turn the knob.

My updated status: “Daniel thinks searching for a job is tedious and exhausting, but the possibilities are endless and exciting. The optimist continues to win out!”

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Culture Shock on Home Soil

Yesterday, I took the train downtown for an interview with a headhunter, followed by lunch with a new networking contact who I met through LinkedIn. As I was speaking on the phone that morning with the LinkedIn contact, she asked what I looked like so she’d be able to spot me in the crowd at Seven on State, the upscale food court on the seventh floor of what used to be Marshall Field’s and is now Macy’s.

I described myself and then told her that, because of my prior meeting with the headhunter, I’d be wearing a suit. As the words were coming out of my mouth, I remembered that midday on a business day in downtown Chicago a significant portion of the men at a popular lunch spot would be wearing suits – that it wouldn’t be something that set me apart.

And so it has been. As I continue to make this transition back from West Coast to Midwest, from beach town to big city, I’ve been experiencing what my college study abroad adviser liked to refer to as “culture shock.” It’s the biggest case I’ve had since I returned back to the U.S. from a semester in Vietnam.

Back in Santa Cruz, the town I called home for the past eight years, I often felt as if all eyes were on me as I walked down the street with a tucked-in dress shirt, slacks, dress shoes and some product in my hair on my way to lunch at my favorite Italian deli. In Santa Cruz, wetsuits are “in” and business suits are most definitely “out.”

During my first weekend back in Chicago this summer, two of my buddies took me out to a trendy River North hotspot. It was a baptism by fire. At home getting dressed for the evening, I thought long and hard about what would be appropriate for me to wear. As it turned out, I fared pretty well in that category for a rookie.

But that did nothing to temper the overwhelming rush that shook through my body as I walked in the door and observed the enormous mass of well-dressed revelers who seemed to move in a wave as they stood packed in across the entire room before me. It was at that moment – and not a few days before as my car emerged from the cornfields of Iowa and into bumper-to-bumper rush-hour traffic on the Dan Ryan – that I finally comprehended the enormity of the decision I had made in returning to live in Chicago for the first time since high school.

After five months, the learning curve continues to be steep. Wardrobe and nightlife are just a couple of the changes I’ve been busy adjusting to. There are certainly more, and I’m sure you’ll hear about many of them here if you continue to follow along.

And, speaking of following along, I know most of you are reading copies of this blog on Facebook, which makes me very happy. But, if you have a moment, I encourage you to take a look at the “actual” blog at danielhindin.typepad.com. There, you can sign up to receive each new entry directly in your email inbox and enjoy other added features. In the meantime, thanks for reading!

Who Made the World and Other Pressing Questions

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Over the past few months, there is one question that I’ve been asked hundreds of times. It’s a question I loathe. Each time is more dreadful than the last. Why did you move back to Chicago?

It’s an innocent and logical question. It’s almost obligatory. In fact, it would be odd if it weren’t asked. But I find the question similar to asking two people why they’re in love with each other. They can’t tell you exactly why. They just are.

I usually humor my interrogator with a simple answer. I wanted to live in a big city. I wanted to be exposed to greater opportunities. Chicago just feels like home. While it’s all true, it’s not the whole truth.

I’m a fan of gut feelings. I trust my gut. No matter how big it gets. On a day-to-day basis, my life is ruled by logic. But many of the most important decisions in my life have been made by submitting myself to faith in the mysteries of the world.

Take the way I first ended up in California. After growing up in Chicago, I spent my freshman year of college at Emory University in Atlanta. After about a semester, it was clear I wasn’t happy there. But would it be worth the trouble to transfer to another college? I would have to go through what would amount to a second freshman year in another strange place where, socially, I would be a year behind my peers. And after all the fuss, there was no guarantee I’d be any happier. It was a risk.

In the end, I knew in my heart that I couldn’t settle. There was no way to know what was waiting for me in California, but I owed it to myself to find out.

As it turned out, the years I spent in California have been the best of my life. And that includes the most recent year. In fact, the last year may have been the best of them all. When I decided to leave, I wasn’t unhappy like I had been in Atlanta. But as life goes by, we evolve, and our personal concepts of fulfillment evolve with us. I got this feeling in my gut that there was more for me to strive for, and I couldn’t ignore it. What else should I have done?

Who made the world? Who made the grasshopper? Many important questions are too big for logical explanation. What I do know is life is too fragile and precious not to follow your heart and take the time to make sure you’re doing the things that make you happy – to be amazed at the complicated simplicity of the world and to honor the bountiful blessings that surround you.

Thanks again to Roger for sharing the poem, “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver, in response to my first entry.

Why the Survival of This Blog Depends on You

All right! Thanks to all of you who commented on the inaugural post of what will come to be known as “Snapshots,” a blog that will be available not only on my Facebook page but also, hopefully, if everything works as it’s supposed to, simultaneously on www.danielhindin.typepad.com. This will allow the few remaining people on this earth who are not members of Facebook to also be a part of the fun! (Welcome, Uncle Steve and Aunt Toni!)

As some of you know, this isn’t the first time I’ve put my thoughts on “paper” for public consumption. For those of you who didn’t know me then, I used to write a weekly column for the newspaper I worked at called the Watsonville Register-Pajaronian. The job of a newspaper editor is often grueling and thankless, and the column became my shining beacon of hope and freedom, a venue where I could share stories and lessons I’d learned along the way.

But the idea of “sharing” is not accomplished with a one-way flow of information. And that’s why I’m so excited that technology has brought us the blog, which allows for so much more immediate interaction than did my column, which was written in the dark ages, when you had to wait for a letter to the editor to be delivered by the U.S. Postal Service.

While I do have a strong affinity for the art of writing itself, the writing is really just a vehicle for my true passion, which is simply the sharing of ideas between human beings – and sometimes dogs. I know my thoughts. They’re in my head. Yes, writing does help to focus them, but I’m more interested in other people’s thoughts. YOUR thoughts. My hope is that something I write will spark a thought in your head, and I encourage you to share that thought so that I, and the others following along, will be blessed with some of the richness that is YOU!

And that’s why I was so happy to receive Roger’s comment on my first post. If you didn’t follow his link to the beautiful and inspiring poem called “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver, I encourage you to do so by clicking here. (I’m not sure if these links will work on Facebook, but they should work on Typepad. If you can’t follow the link, then just paste www.loc.gov/poetry/180/133.html into your browser.)

Honestly, this post was originally intended to reflect on that poem, but it’s taken me so long to lead up to it that I’m now going to start another separate post and give it the attention it deserves.

I know, I’m sorry. I just got so excited about how cool it will be to play in the sandbox with all you wonderful people that I veered completely off task. But please, while I encourage you to interact with me and everyone else, I do understand if you don’t feel comfortable doing so. In fact, in many cases, I’m the one following along silently. So, please, if that’s what makes you happy, I encourage that as well.

So, anyway, check out my soon-to-come post on “The Summer Day.” And I’ll just leave you on this post with a shout-out to my amazing sister Jamie and my charming future brother-in-law Adam, who are now engaged to be married! The question was popped romantically while both were in their pajamas on Wednesday night. I love you both, and you both are so deserving of each other. Congrats!

The Start of Something Good

Bob Dylan wrote in his song “Talkin’ New York” about his first weeks as a transplant to New York:

Wintertime in New York town
The wind blowing snow around
Walk around with nowhere to go
Somebody could freeze right to the bone
I froze right to the bone
New York Times said it was the coldest
winter in seventeen years
I didn't feel so cold then.

Those words have been tracking through my head on a loop over the past few days – actually just the last three lines, to be specific. Apparently, we here in Chicago have already endured as much snow by mid-January – less than one month into winter – as the city usually receives over an entire year. Learning this from the Chicago television media has had the same effect on me as the Times article had on old Bobby D; I have to admit, I don’t feel so cold now! Well, maybe a little…

It’s a funny coincidence to probably no one but me, however, that Dylan’s first weeks in New York were as a 19-year-old who had left his home and family in Minnesota for the first time to seek his fate in the Big City. I say it’s a funny coincidence because it was as at the age of 19 that I moved 2,000 miles away from my family and the Second City (Ok, it was the suburbs) for the warmer climes of California.

Now, after 11 years Out West, I’ve returned to Chicago as a 30-year-old who has forgotten what winter is. The fun part has been buying a whole new wardrobe – especially amid the 70% off sales everywhere you turn! I’ve geared up with the obligatory wool coat, scarf and long underwear and have resolved to embrace my new/old home.

But winter is only temporary. My life, though temporary as well, is expected to last more than a few months. And beyond the cold and the snow, my move back to Chicago represents a hunt – well, not a hunt, a search maybe. The first things on my list to find are a job, a place to live – basically a life. Is that too much to ask?

Those things take time – especially a job in the throes of the big “R” word: Recession. In the interim, I find my mind filled with thoughts that I would like to – or maybe need to – share with others. And my intention is to use this outlet to document this life-altering decision to pick up my life and drop it 2,000 miles away in a place that is both as foreign and familiar as, say, your mother’s womb – though not as warm, of course!

I hope you will join me in sifting through some of both the lighter and heavier moments during this profound transition and wherever it might lead me. Feel free to comment if the moment strikes you, or to just read in silence. Really, it would make me happy to know you were reading at all. I know I will have one dedicated reader – my mother – but it is my sincere hope that perhaps a few others will follow along as well. To use Dylan’s words, maybe I won’t feel so cold then…