Titan of Industry in Search of Siren of Titan

Time goes by so fast. I have been off social media for months. No Facebook or Twitter or Ello.co or Instagram or any of that for at least 5 or 6 months now. My leaving Facebook may be going on a year already. I'm not sure, but it's definitely been awhile, and I'm not going back. I realize it probably doesn't seem like it from where you're sitting, but you'll gain far more than you lose when you drop out of the crowd.

The one arguably social media account I still maintain is at LinkedIn. Doing so is practically a professional requirement in the technology industry. I don't believe anyone but recruiters on the prowl and self-proclaimed entrepreneurs actually use the site as anything more than a fancy business card. However, it is a good way to keep an open line of contact with professional acquaintances without getting tangled up in the boundary issues inherent to Facebook.

I checked up on my own LinkedIn account today and two things struck me immediately:

1. The description on my profile page was a generic version of the cover letter to my resume, and
2. I have been at my current job for almost two years.¹

I suppose after all this time I should settle in and accept that I'm not looking for work. It's difficult for me to relax about my career. My success has been hard won and fraught with major setbacks. If living such a life has taught me anything, it's that everything falls apart the day after tomorrow. In the meantime, I've updated my profile as follows:

Erik Smith, Titan of Industry

I am a contractor working at [FORTUNE 50 COMPANY] building and maintaining complex single-page applications in Angular and React. It's very enterprisey and involves a great many computers. I grok Promises.

In my spare time, I enjoy walking around Philadelphia, taking photographs, listening to music, playing chess, and solving Rubik's cube—typically all at the same time. You may have seen me about town, pretentiously bumping into things.

As for my politics, I am of the opinion only TOS is canon, while all the other series are studio-produced fan fiction. I am willing to defend this position publicly in any train station or airport terminal inside the Continental United States of America, provided you pay my airfare (business class or better) and a suitable per diem (by which I mean I intend to purchase a nice suit with the per diem).

I have no interest in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. None.

For the time being, it is my ambition to not show up in 200+ LinkedIn searches every week.

Footnotes

1. Never blink, you'll lose precious microseconds.