A LinkedIn Existential Crisis

Who has ever had an existential crisis, LinkedIn-style?

Sheepishly raising my hand.

For a stretch in 2025, I went unusually quiet on LinkedIn. Not because I had nothing to say. Quite the opposite. I wrote several articles. Drafted multiple posts. Only published one.

What slowed me down was not a lack of ideas. It was something more basic. My LinkedIn profile itself.

I bored myself reading about myself. Seriously.

I wrote my profile. I had no one to blame but myself. But, damn, would I want to connect with me… let alone hire me?

Nope. Hard pass.

Some interesting tidbits. Some serious-sounding jobs. Definitely some off-the-beaten-path experiences. But where was the human here? Was there a human here?

My headline? "Senior Private Sector Advisor, USAID Moldova."

Simple. Straightforward. Accurate. Boring as hell.

My "About" section? Even worse. It started with something like: "Experienced international development professional with proven expertise in..." Barf. Who writes like that? Apparently I did. And it only got worse from there.

Zero personality. Nothing that would make someone think, "I want to grab coffee with this guy."

So I started to polish. "I can do better," I told myself. I tweaked. I revised. I asked ChatGPT for help. (Spoiler alert: GenAI cannot make you sound more like you. Ahem.)

But the more I polished, the further I got from who I actually was. I kept asking myself: would I want to connect with this person? Would I even respond to their DM?

What's that saying about polishing a turd? Yeah. That.

My turd of a profile didn't need refinement. It needed a dang overhaul.

It needed to sound like me. The real me. Not the sanitized, LinkedIn-appropriate, keyword-optimized version. The guy who uses the word "turd" in professional writing and doesn't apologize for it.

I didn't know where I wanted to end up after my impending "forced career pivot." But I knew this: if being myself on LinkedIn meant losing a job opportunity, I didn't want that job anyway.

That's when it clicked.

The goal wasn't to sound impressive. Or safe. The goal was to sound real. To let my profile reflect not just where I'd been and what I'd done, but how I think, how I work, and what I'm genuinely curious about. Oh, and that I'm a pretty fun dude, if I don't say so myself… and who wouldn't want to work with a pretty fun dude?

Here's the thing: you can't show up consistently online if the "you" on the page isn't actually you. You’ll be found out.

That was the start of a longer process of rethinking how I show up online. Not as a LinkedIn profile or résumé. Not as a performance. Not as a safe list of positions and accomplishments. But as me. Just me. The guy you'd actually meet if we grabbed coffee.

If you look at my LinkedIn profile today, hopefully you find a bit of personality coming through. My headline now? "Senior Advisor, U.S. Embassy Moldova | Diplomat | Chef-Adjacent Nomadic Father of Pets | Truth Teller."

Better, right?

And if you read my posts on LinkedIn (and if you don't, you really should btw), hopefully you find a lot of personality… the real me. Unabashed personality.

So, who wants to hire me?

(P.S. If the "turd" comment was a dealbreaker, you probably weren't my people anyway. Just saying.)