silence, self-promotion, and pineapple pastries

One month ago I was in San José, Costa Rica attending a conference that brought together people working at the intersection of tech and human rights. I was immersed in a bustling professional and academic environment…very different from the mountains and outdoors spaces I found myself fleeing to for solace in the months prior. It had me feeling like a fish out of water in the beginning, I’ve had a knack for networking in the past but as a natural introvert I usually explain that socializing requires extra energy, effort, and quite frankly can be exhausting. 

I was excited though, and empowered meeting others doing amazing work in this area and learning so much along the way. I was also hoping that a potential collaboration, fellowship, funding, or job opportunity would surface from the connections I made (running to the mountains had been fun, but sadly doesn’t pay bills). I jumped in head first on days 1 & 2 talking to people and attending as many sessions as possible…only to have hit a wall very hard and fast on day 3. I’d never felt so overstimulated mentally and socially in my entire life. I was drained and found myself in the designated quiet room staring at the ceiling and savoring the silence for a solid hour before convincing myself to go back out there. 

During my impromptu sabbatical these 8 months prior, I’d thought a lot more about my personality type and tendencies. And always wondered if we should lean into our differences and how that adds to our strengths as individual contributors or leaders. Or wondering to what extent should we be training ourselves and adopting habits to “do” and “be” what is expected in certain environments? 

I had decided to draft a LinkedIn post recapping the conference, sharing some of my contributions, tagging key people I’d met, and including a couple of pretty pictures for the algorithm. I wasn’t doing it out of my own desire for clout or attention, if anything doing this made me feel slightly uncomfortable and felt artificial. But I’ve recognized that with any job or role we hold, there are certain rules that we need to abide by and games that need to be played, and I’d gotten pretty good at knowing what needs to be done to succeed. Whether or not I agreed with it was a different story. It was only after I posted and talked to a mentor about it, that I realized that me feeling like I need to do this for my career was misconstrued (there’s an added level of concern with pictures of others too so I quickly decided to take the post down). Self-promotion is expected to some extent, but if we don’t agree with these existing rules or implicit expectations then how will we ever shift the status quo and celebrate individuality and respect other decisions? The conversation with him had me challenge why I thought I had to do certain things and it was a relief once I followed my intuition and did what I was comfortable with. 

A few days later I was driving through the Costa Rican countryside with a friend, almost fully recovered from how overboard I’d gone with socializing at the summit (spending time at the beach and chasing sunsets really helped). We’d picked up some snacks and pastries for the road and had around a 4 hour drive to our next stop in Monteverde. I was sitting in the passenger seat with the windows rolled down and was eating a pineapple tart, a scene that was honestly so simple but so therapeutic and needed. I was looking out at the seemingly still and untouched hills in the distance, sitting there quietly and letting my thoughts wander…thinking about how we never truly know what we need and how much of what we decide to do is influenced by external factors or what people say we “should” be doing. Societally, we might crave attention and validation but it’s really the little things and moments with ourselves where you have the agency to follow your gut and make decisions that feel right (even if it doesn’t make sense to anyone else) that’s the most important.