I’ve just spent the last 3 months traveling between New York and Washington DC. I rested, reflected about my life, love and my business, stayed with friends, went to dinners, parties and museums, attended tech and business events, went for long walks and spent days in Starbucks reserve shops working on my business. That time gave me lots of energy and fresh perspective and what I didn’t realised I enjoyed the most- anonymity.
Coming from Kingston, Jamaica which has 662,426 people with a pretty cool reputation in a tech industry which is a sliver of that population-makes you unable to walk 3 miles without someone knowing who you are. That’s not a bad thing, I earned that reputation and knowability and I welcome it, relish it…mostly. For the most part, I love it when people want to talk, have impromptu discussions or buy me a drink to discuss industry stuff- even when I have headphones on and in a work zone. It’s par for the course of being a tech industry pioneer and entrepreneur and general benevolent troublemaker.
That said, being in New York and DC, staying with friends, there was none of that and I enjoyed the peace. No-one knew or cared who the fuck I was, no-one called out my name, no-one cared how I dressed or who I was hanging out with ( well, except when I was hanging with Marlon since he’s kinda famous). It was peace to my ears, quiet to my soul. Why? Because on this radical sabbatical which has finally turned into full-time digital nomadism ( 6 months and counting) – I could be super selfish and focus only on me and just be me and I love the opportunities it brought me, reminded me that I had.
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- When you’re anonymous, you can try new things. Being known brings pressure to perform, which can lead to playing it safe and not taking the kind of risks that make for interesting work. But when nobody knows who I am, I can experiment without expectation. When nobody’s heard of me, it’s okay. I get to try on new elevator pitches about who you are and also who you are becoming. I embraced the gift of invisibility and used it to my advantage. I dressed more androgynously, depending on the event I would try on different scripts to to different audiences and see what each got me- responses, introductions and ideas. Practice without the pressure of having to perform was just awesome. I felt light, fresh, confident and had fun with it.
- When you’re anonymous, you can fail quietly. This means I can attempt projects that may not work and learn from them without public shaming. I can iterate more easily and less conspicuously.
- When you’re anonymous, you can get better faster. Because I wasn’t worried about what people will think or trying to live up to my last success, I’ve been using it grow my craft in the shadows than in the spotlight- been trying new things with ideas around Caribbean Women in Tech, digital content especially podcasts and new tech event ideas for markets outside the Caribbean-hence why I’ll be headed to South Africa and Malaysia.
As they said, when a girl is unafraid, the world is her oyster.